Flight Mapper FAQ

Yes. No signup, no credit card, no premium tier. The full feature set — multi-leg routes, range rings, briefings, GPS, sharing, PWA install — is fully usable today. We may show advertising banners to offset hosting costs, but the tool itself is unrestricted.

Flight Mapper uses the haversine formula, which assumes a perfectly spherical Earth. For typical flight planning purposes (distances up to 7,000 nautical miles), it's accurate to within 0.5%. For high-precision applications (oceanic flight plans, certified planning), use a tool that uses the WGS-84 ellipsoid model.

No. Flight Mapper is designed for quick estimates, briefings, and visualization — not as a substitute for certified flight planning software. Always validate routes, fuel, weather, and NOTAMs through your operator's approved planning system before flight.

Over 70,000 airports worldwide, compiled from multiple aviation data sources and curated by our team. Includes major commercial airports, regional fields, private strips, helipads, and many remote locations. If a specific airport is missing or has wrong data, email us with the ICAO code.

It's not curved in 3D space — it's the shortest path on Earth's surface (a great circle). On a flat Mercator map, great circles look curved, especially for east-west routes at high latitudes. A flight from New York to Tokyo, for example, naturally arcs over Alaska and Russia. This is real, not a bug.

Yes. Switch to Raw / Multi mode and chain airports with hyphens: SBGR-KMIA-KJFK-EGLL. Three legs are added in one click. You can also plan multiple independent trips by separating with commas: SBGR-KMIA, OMDW-EGLL creates two separate route groups.

Pick a center airport, pick a distance and unit (nautical miles, statute miles, kilometers, or minutes of flight time), pick a color, and click Add Circle. The ring is drawn at constant distance from the center. Useful for visualizing fuel reserves, ETOPS coverage, or delivery analysis. Stack multiple rings of different colors to compare scenarios.

When you pick "Minutes", the ring is drawn at the distance you'd travel in that many minutes at the configured speed (default 330 KT, typical light jet diversion speed). For example, "60 minutes" at 330 KT draws a 330 NM ring. Useful for ETOPS analysis where you ask "what's reachable in N minutes?"

Routes aren't saved server-side — Flight Mapper has no user accounts. To save a route, click the Share button. A URL is generated that contains the entire current state. Bookmark it, or paste it into Notes / Slack / WhatsApp / email. Opening that URL later restores the exact same view.

Click "Route Briefing" (bottom-left of the map). The modal opens with a printable summary of all current routes. Click "Save PNG" at the top. On mobile, a native share sheet appears (WhatsApp, Mail, Photos). On desktop, a PNG file downloads. The briefing follows your current theme (light or dark).

No. Routes exist only in your browser. They're never sent to any server. Closing the tab erases them. The only data sent externally is anonymous Google Analytics events (e.g., "a route was added") and the Vercel hosting access log — neither contains your specific routes.

Never. When you tap the GPS button, your location is captured by your browser and used only locally to drop a pin and let you use MYLOC in airport inputs. It's stored in your tab's memory and erased when you close it. No GPS coordinates are sent to our servers, Google, or anywhere else.

Aggregate, anonymous events: page views, country, device type, and a few feature-specific events ("route added", "briefing opened", "GPS used"). For "route added" we send the airport codes (e.g., SBGR → KMIA) and distance — no personal information. IPs are anonymized by Google. See our Privacy Policy for full details.

Yes — Google Analytics uses cookies to identify unique visitors. We also use localStorage (not cookies) to remember your theme preference and dismissals (like the install banner). No advertising cookies are set by us directly. AdSense, where present, may set its own cookies — see Google's policy.

Yes. Flight Mapper is fully responsive and works in Safari, Chrome, and Firefox on iOS. You can install it as a Progressive Web App from Safari (Share → Add to Home Screen) so it lives on your home screen like a native app.

Partially. Once loaded, the UI works offline, but map tiles need internet to render new areas. The PWA caches the shell so it opens fast even on poor connections. Full offline mode (with cached tiles) isn't supported yet.

GPS requires HTTPS and a device with a location sensor. Most laptops don't have GPS, so the browser falls back to IP-based geolocation (city-level accuracy). For best results, use a phone or tablet outdoors.

A Brazilian aviation operator providing flight planning, overflight and landing permits, charter brokerage, concierge, and full management services for business jets globally. We built Flight Mapper as an internal tool, then released it free to the aviation community. Learn more at alexaaviation.com.

Yes — if you operate a business jet and need support with flight planning, permits, charter, or concierge services, contact us. We work globally with operators of Embraer, Cessna, Bombardier, Gulfstream, Boeing, and Airbus business aircraft.

Send us a message including: the URL you were on (use Share to get a permalink), what you tried to do, what happened, and what you expected. Screenshots help.

Maybe. We read every request and prioritize what's most useful to the most people. Recently added by user request: range rings in minutes, multi-route briefings, GPS, light theme, PNG export. Tell us what you need.