A few months back, the French DGAC has released
AIRAC AIP SUP 198/20 with pretty extensive airspace changes in the Annecy area. These are in effect from December 3, 2020 to April 21, 2021.
I have noticed that SkyDemon (French chart updated) does not reflect the updated airspace. This is probably expected, as the above document says:
This [sic] modifications will be included in AIP FRANCE on AIRAC AMDT 04/21.
I take that this means that the official charts will only be updated in AIRAC cycle 04/21 (so it appears in April, toward the end of the effective period of the changes), and I assume that SkyDemon uses these official chart updates.
The obvious question: Is there any way for SkyDemon to incorporate the airspace changes already now, either by SkyDemon (i.e., upstream), or local amendment by the user? Flying with out-of-date maps seems like an airspace violation waiting to happen.
Furthermore, I am a little in disbelief about the lack of practicality of what the DGAC is seemingly doing here:
Do they really expect pilots to try to figure out what the actual detailed airspace changes are (took me 1+ hours of concentrated work comparing old and new charts, as well as retracing the GPS coordinates of the airspace polygons), and somehow amend their paper maps?
As most people fly with GPS and electronic maps today (last but not least due to the complexity of the airspace), there seems no way to fly with up-to-date electronic maps until the AIRAC cycle comes when they make the official release. So either you have to go back to paper maps until then, or you cannot rely too much on them and have to remember that some airspace is different than shown, which is quite a cognitive overhead.
Michael