Advanced Flight Planning

smhylcn08

I would like to suggest adding a more comprehensive Flight Planning / Route Analysis mode to Windy’s existing aviation features, specifically designed to support professional pilots during pre-flight planning.

The main idea is to allow pilots to evaluate weather and operational risks affecting their specific flight based on route, flight level and time, rather than only viewing general weather conditions.

Suggested features:

Route-Based Flight Planning
Pilots should be able to enter the departure, destination, alternates, ICAO route, estimated departure time and planned flight level. The complete route and waypoints should then be displayed on the Windy map.
Time and Flight-Level-Based Weather Analysis
Windy could calculate the aircraft’s estimated progress and ETO along the route, displaying forecast weather for the time the aircraft is expected to reach each route segment.

In other words, instead of only answering “What is the weather there now?”, Windy could answer:

“What conditions are expected when my aircraft gets there?”

Automatic Flight Risk Level
The route could automatically be analysed for hazards including CB/thunderstorms, turbulence, CAT, icing, jet streams, mountain waves, volcanic ash, SIGMETs, cloud tops, and other significant aviation weather.

Each route segment could receive a risk level such as:

LOW / MODERATE / HIGH / SEVERE

The reason for the risk, affected flight levels and relevant time period should also be displayed.

For example:

HIGH RISK – SEV TURB FL340–400 / CB TOP FL450 / 13:40–14:20 UTC

Vertical Route Profile
A vertical distance/time vs altitude profile could display turbulence, icing, CB/cloud tops and other significant weather along the entire flight.

This would allow pilots to quickly understand not only where a hazard exists, but also at which flight levels it may affect the aircraft.

Jeppesen Low / High Enroute Chart Integration
If licensing and technical integration are possible, an option to use Jeppesen Low and High Enroute Charts as a map background would be extremely useful.

This would allow airways, waypoints, navaids, FIR boundaries and other aviation information to be viewed together with Windy’s weather layers.

NOTAM Integration and Smart Flight Alerts
Windy already provides airport NOTAM information. In Flight Planning mode, these NOTAMs could be automatically associated with the planned flight.

The system could highlight operationally significant NOTAMs affecting the departure, destination, alternates or route.

For example:

⚠️ DESTINATION AIRPORT CLOSED
⚠️ RUNWAY CLOSED
⚠️ ALTERNATE AIRPORT CLOSED
⚠️ AIRSPACE / ROUTE RESTRICTION
⚠️ NAV AID U/S
⚠️ RWY / TWY CLOSURE

This could help pilots quickly identify relevant information without having to manually filter through a large number of NOTAMs.

Editable Waypoints and Coordinates
After creating the route, pilots should be able to manually edit individual waypoints.

Waypoints could be moved directly on the map using drag & drop, or their latitude/longitude values could be edited manually.

Pilots should also be able to add custom waypoints/coordinates between existing points or remove unnecessary points.

After any route modification, distance, track, ETO and risk analysis should automatically be recalculated.

Selectable Coordinate Formats and Automatic Conversion
Pilots should be able to select the coordinate format used for both input and display, including:

Degrees / Minutes / Seconds (DMS)
Degrees + Decimal Minutes
Decimal Degrees
ICAO/FPL-compatible coordinate formats

Coordinates entered in one format could automatically be converted into the other supported formats.

“What-If?” Route and Flight-Level Analysis
Changing the route or flight level could immediately trigger a new risk analysis.

For example, if significant turbulence is expected at FL390, the pilot could quickly compare FL350 or FL430.

Likewise, moving a waypoint to avoid a CB, SIGMET or other hazardous area could immediately show how the overall flight risk changes.

Overall concept

ROUTE + FLIGHT LEVEL + TIME + WEATHER + SIGMET + NOTAM + ENROUTE CHART → FLIGHT RISK ANALYSIS

Such a feature could take Windy beyond being an excellent weather visualization application and make it an even more powerful pre-flight planning tool for pilots — answering the practical question:

“What am I likely to encounter along my planned route, when will I encounter it, and at which flight levels?”

Suty

@smhylcn08 Hello and thank you for your report and feedback. I can't promise if any of your suggestions will be added, however, we already have prepared updated version of our Route planner that contains more tools and features for pilots. Hopefully, you will be satisfied.