Private beta: IFR flight planning plugin for pilots

Edward Juden

Hi Windy community,

I’m currently beta testing a Windy.com plugin called Windy IFR Planner and would appreciate feedback from pilots who use Windy for aviation weather planning.

Beta page:
https://snickitybit.com/software/windy-ifr-plugin/

The plugin is focused on strategic IFR preflight planning inside Windy. It includes FAA preferred routes through named fixes, route segment weather visualization, vertical profile with terrain/clouds/icing/turbulence/winds, forecast timing by waypoint, cruise-altitude advisories, route comparison, and export options for EFB workflows.

A few current beta notes:
• Desktop browsers are supported.
• Safari on iPad is supported.
• iPhone Safari and the native Windy mobile apps are not supported yet during private beta.
• The plugin is currently installed through Windy developer mode because it is private/unlisted.

I fly a PA-46 Malibu Mirage, so this started as a tool I wanted for real-world IFR planning questions:
• What’s the smarter altitude?
• Where is the ice layer?
• How bad are the winds?
• What does the route look like vertically before I go?

Important aviation disclaimer:
This is decision support only. It is not a substitute for an official weather briefing, current charts, NOTAMs, ATC clearance, approved flight planning tools, aircraft performance calculations, or pilot judgment.

Feedback is very welcome, especially on:
• Route usability
• Altitude recommendations
• Weather/advisory clarity
• Aircraft profiles
• Confusing UI areas
• Plugin installation issues during private beta

Thanks — I’d appreciate any feedback from pilots willing to test real routes.

Edward Juden

Windy IFR Planner 0.10.0 — Share your routes, and a look at what's next

The latest build is live. Grab it from the install page) and you'll see a What's New card on first open summarizing the changes below.

What's new

Share a route as a link or QR code. Plan a route, hit Share, and send a link (or scan the QR) that opens the plugin with the whole route already loaded — departure, destination, altitude, aircraft, and the full route string. Great for handing a plan to a fellow pilot or pulling it up on another device.
Open shared links straight into the planner. Tapping a shared link drops you right into the plugin with everything prefilled and computed — no re-typing.
Set your departure time directly. New ETD entry lets you type your departure time instead of wrestling the timeline slider — it moves Windy's timeline for you and refreshes the route weather to match.
In-app "What's New." The plugin now tells you what changed when it updates, so you're never guessing what's new.

Coming next: your aircraft, your numbers

The performance profiles we ship are solid POH approximations — but they're not your airplane. So we're adding the ability to add and edit aircraft right in the plugin, with every performance field editable:

Name
Cruise speed (KTAS)
Service ceiling (ft)
Climb rate (fpm)
Descent rate (fpm)
Fuel burn (gph)
Typical cruise altitudes (ft)

Fly a 350P that burns 23 GPH, not 18? Correct it. Fly something we don't list yet — a 500TP, a turbine conversion, your homebuilt? Add it from scratch. Your edits are saved on your device, and you can always reset a built-in back to our defaults.

More soon — and as always, the feedback button in the plugin goes straight to us. Keep it coming.

Edward Juden

Windy IFR Planner 0.11.0 — Your aircraft, your numbers, and a smarter look ahead

This release is live. Grab it from the
install page) — installed
testers will see an update notice, and a What's New card summarizes the
changes below.

The headline: the "add your own aircraft" feature we teased last release is
here — plus a quick way to size up the next few days and a legend so the
profile finally explains itself.

What's new

Add & edit aircraft

The profiles we ship are solid POH approximations — but they're not your
airplane. Now every performance field is yours to change, right in the plugin:

Name
Cruise speed (KTAS)
Service ceiling (ft)
Climb rate (fpm)
Descent rate (fpm)
Fuel burn (gph)
Typical cruise altitudes (ft)

Fly a 350P that burns 23 GPH, not 18? Correct it. Fly something we don't list
yet — a 500TP, a turbine conversion, a homebuilt? Add it from scratch. Your
edits are saved on your device, and you can reset any built-in back to our
defaults anytime.

Compare days

One tap compares the next three departure days at your ETD hour and gives
each a Favorable / Mixed / Adverse weather read, with the two biggest
factors tagged by where they apply — Cruise, Climb/Descent, Aircraft
limit. Tap a day to load its full profile and sync Windy's timeline to it.
It's a weather comparison to help you find the good day — not a go/no-go
decision; that call stays yours.

A legend for the profile

The vertical profile color-codes a lot — icing and turbulence by severity,
cloud coverage, the freezing level. A new collapsible Legend (right on the
profile's controls row) explains every color and hatch, so you're never
guessing what a band means. It's open the first time so you notice it, then
remembers your choice.

Cruise altitude stays within your aircraft

Cruise altitude is now capped at the selected airframe's service ceiling — pick
the PA46-350P and it won't let you plan at FL320. Switch aircraft and a
too-high altitude snaps down automatically.

Smaller touches

The route action button is now labeled Export (it does more than EFB
hand-off now — share link, QR, and the EFB deep link all live there).

As always, the feedback button in the plugin goes straight to us. Tell us what
your airplane needs and what the weather read gets right (or wrong). Keep it
coming.

Edward Juden

Windy IFR Planner 0.14.0 — Fuel, range, and where the weather can actually take you

This release is live. One thing on updating: each version is its own install
URL, so you update by re-installing the new build — reloading just re-runs
the version you already have. Installed testers will see an in-plugin update
notice that links straight to it; new here, grab 0.14.0 from the
install page. A What's
New card summarizes the changes once you're in. It's been a few releases since
I last posted here (0.11.0), so this rounds up everything since.

The headline: the plugin now answers the question I kept wanting it to —
given today's winds aloft and the fuel I'm carrying, how far can I actually
get? Not a fuel-stop planner (that's your EFB's job) — a strategic,
weather-and-fuel-aware picture of your reach, right on the Windy map.

What's new in 0.14.0

Fuel & range

Enter your fuel on board and the planner tells you whether your destination
is reachable — and by how much. Make it with time to spare and you get a margin
readout; come up short and a "reserve point" is dropped right on the route
line showing where you'd hit your reserve. It holds back a fixed 1-hour
reserve and accounts for the winds along your route — a headwind pulls the
point closer, a tailwind pushes it out.

Wind-adjusted reachable area

The fun one. Toggle Show reachable area and the map draws a ring of where
you could go on the fuel you've got — offset for the winds aloft, so it leans
downwind. Scrub the vertical-profile chart and the ring re-anchors to that
point and shrinks as fuel burns down the route. It's a strategic estimate —
verify your fuel planning independently — but it's a genuinely useful "where
can the weather take me from here" picture.

Fuel that matches your airplane

Every aircraft now carries usable fuel, a cruise fuel burn, and a
climb fuel flow (gph) — all editable, like the rest of the profile. The
range math charges the heavier climb burn, computed from your climb rate and
cruise altitude, so a high climb costs more fuel than a low one. Fly a 350P
that burns 23 in cruise and 32 in the climb? Put your real numbers in. (The
values we ship are planning-grade drafts — correct them to your POH.)

A panel that's easier to read

The planner is now organized into clear sections — Route, Aircraft, Departure
time, Fuel & range, Compare days — with the analysis sections collapsible, so
it's not a wall of controls.

Also landed since my last post (0.12.0–0.13.0)

Dozens more aircraft out of the box — Cessna, Beechcraft, Mooney,
Diamond, more Piper and Cirrus, turboprops (TBM, PC-12, Caravan, Kodiak, King
Air), Van's RVs, and a couple of light jets. You can still add or edit any of
them.
Compare Days got better — it now centers on your chosen ETD and spans
5 days (was 3, anchored to today), with an optional toggle so low-level
climb/descent turbulence doesn't dominate a day's rating.
Your departure time stays put when you switch Windy map layers — no more
snapping back to "now."
Cloud-top readouts now reflect the clouds your flight actually passes
through, not high cirrus far above you.

One thing we're testing — mobile layout

On phones and foldables the plugin now docks as a compact bottom sheet
instead of taking the whole screen, so the map stays visible. If you fly with
it on a phone or a foldable (a Z Fold report kicked this off), tell us how it
feels — it's a live experiment, and your feedback decides whether it stays.

As always, the feedback button in the plugin comes straight to me. Fuel numbers
off for your type? Reachable ring look wrong? Mobile layout cramped? Keep it
coming.

Edward Juden

Update — 2 weeks in: fuel & range, and a much better icing model

Quick progress update for anyone following along. Thanks to everyone who's tried it and sent notes — a lot of this came straight from tester feedback.

What's new since the original post:

Fuel & wind-adjusted range. Enter your fuel on board and see how far you can actually reach along the route — a reachable-area ring that accounts for winds aloft, plus a "reserve point" marking where you'd hit your 1-hour reserve.
Much-improved icing. A tester compared the plugin's vertical profile against a trusted reference on a real winter route and found it was over-calling "severe." He was right — I rebuilt the icing model so temperature (not just humidity) drives severity, validated it against that case plus several North American winter routes, and reserved "severe" for genuine freezing-rain setups. Far fewer false alarms now.
Smarter cruise-altitude recommendations. They now stay within each aircraft's normal operating altitudes — no more suggesting 4,000 ft for a turboprop or the service ceiling for a piston.
Compare Days weighs hazards by how severe they are, how much of the route they cover, and whether they sit at your cruise altitude — so a single patch of weather no longer tanks a day's rating.
Smoother fuel entry and a few other refinements from tester reports.

Still a free private beta, installed via Windy developer mode. Desktop browsers and Safari on iPad are supported. Beta page (install steps + the full aviation disclaimer): https://snickitybit.com/software/windy-ifr-plugin/

Decision support only — not a substitute for an official briefing, charts, NOTAMs, ATC clearance, or pilot judgment.

I'd still love more pilots testing real routes, especially around icing and altitude calls. Thanks!