FlyQ Pilot's Guide

Unlike IFR enroute charts or Sectionals, there is no planned expiration date for a plate; the FAA just updates it when necessary. Thus, it's not possible for the FAA to print an expiration date on a plate since they have no idea when it might expire. Plates do have revision info on them in the lower left corner, however. This revision info remains constant even when the date on the side changes (unless the plate really was changed, of course) but it's hard to decode as it sometimes involves what's called a Julian date. Moreover, unless you know for sure what the "current" revision info is, it doesn't help you much as there is nothing to compare it to. We all just have to rely on the FAA accurately marking plates when changed. The good news is that we've been doing this for 10 years and we’ve never seen them make a mistake about this. You can tell FlyQ EFB to download all plates, even the ones that have not changed, but we strongly recommend against this because it dramatically increases monthly update time.

FlyQ EFB Pilot’s Guide

Version 3.0 (2/8/2018)

Page 104