An owner with a Dynon SkyView or an Advanced Flight Systems panel has, until now, had one obvious place to buy charts for it: the Seattle Avionics ChartData program that Dynon offers. A new company is now selling the same kind of data for less. EFISCharts announced its service from Sacramento on Oct. 22, 2026, and its prices are well under half of Dynon's.
What it sells
There are two plans, both for the whole United States, and both billed once a year:
- VFR, $39 a year: sectionals, terminal area charts and their insets, VFR flyway charts, a satellite imagery layer, the FAA's airport diagrams (about 890 of them), the company's own diagrams for more than 3,300 other airports, and the airspace, airport and obstacle database file the Dynon and AFS displays use.
- VFR and IFR, $49 a year: all of that, plus low and high IFR enroute charts, instrument approach plates, SIDs and STARs.
Dynon's page, read today, gives $119 a year for Seattle Avionics' charts, VFR and IFR together, in what Dynon calls a Dynon-subsidized program. Both services cover every display in one airplane with one subscription.
EFISCharts gives new subscribers three months free. Through Dec. 31, 2026, it also offers to extend the first renewal by whatever is left on a competing subscription, for an owner who emails the receipt.
Which panels it works with
The company's terms name Dynon SkyView, Dynon D-series and AFS EFIS displays. Its support page says Garmin and Aspen aren't supported. Checkout asks for the display's serial number, which SkyView shows under Setup, then System Information, and an AFS display under Set, then Cal (held), then System Information. The serial of any one display in the airplane is enough.
One cost doesn't change with the chart vendor. Dynon's chart page says the SkyView map needs its Navigation Mapping Software, a $500 license per airplane after a 30-hour trial. EFISCharts' pages don't mention it.
How the charts get into the airplane
Like Dynon's charts, these ride on USB sticks plugged into the displays. A free program, EFISChartSync, downloads each cycle and writes the sticks. The support page lists macOS 12 or later and 64-bit Windows 10 version 1809 or later, and calls the iPad and iPhone versions "coming soon", though the press release lists them as available now.
The sticks have to be 16 or 32 GB and formatted FAT32 with a Master Boot Record; larger sticks and other formats are refused. The full U.S. VFR and IFR set runs 15 to 22 GB, so the computer doing the downloading needs about 25 GB free. The company recommends a fast stick, because the write speed sets how long a load takes.
What to know before switching
The terms say what the charts are for. EFISCharts is a trade name of Abeam LLC, and its terms of service call the charts "not certified for primary navigation" and "not a substitute for official aeronautical charts", supplemental situational awareness only. Dynon's chart page makes no statement either way.
The satellite diagrams aren't FAA diagrams. The 3,300 extra airports are ones the FAA publishes no diagram for, so each is the company's own image of the field. The pages name USGS for the imagery layer, at about 70 meters a pixel and 35 meters near airports, but give no date for the pictures, and a picture shows a field as it was the day it was taken. For a closed runway, a displaced threshold or work in progress, the Chart Supplement and the NOTAMs still have the answer.
The cycles aren't all 28 days. The company describes all its charts as updated on the 28-day AIRAC cycle. The FAA's digital terminal procedures, the plates, do come out every 28 days, but its digital VFR charts page puts out changed sectionals in 56-day sets. An owner should expect the sectionals on a stick to change less often than the plates.
It renews by itself. Subscriptions renew each year at the price then in force, with 30 days' notice of any increase, and are cancelled through the Stripe customer portal. After a cancellation the charts work to the end of the paid year; the next cycle's key file just isn't issued.
Sources: EFISCharts.com, press release, Oct. 22, 2026; EFISCharts.com, plans, subscription page, support questions and terms of service, all read Nov. 3, 2026; Dynon, Geo-Referenced Charts and Airport Diagrams for the US, read Nov. 3, 2026; FAA, Digital Visual Charts and Digital Terminal Procedures Publication, read Nov. 3, 2026.
Photo: AERO Friedrichshafen 2018 (1X7A4309).jpg) by Matti Blume, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.