I added flight planning to metarandtaf.com, a weather briefing site for pilots (METAR/TAF decoder, 3D weather, route briefing). Pilots can now plan a VFR or an IFR flight on the same page they read the weather on.

VFR

Type two airports (or draw the route on the map) and it builds a checkpoint route that avoids prohibited and restricted areas, shows CTR/TMA on the map, and gives you a wind-corrected nav log, an EASA-style fuel plan and the NOTAMs along the route.

VFR flight planning

IFR

For IFR it routes over airways (A* over the airway graph, MEA-aware), writes the ICAO route string, an IFR nav log and the ICAO flight plan (items 7-19).

IFR flight planning

What is under the hood

  • The route engine runs in the browser: airway routing, route string parsing and writing, magnetic variation from a WMM grid.
  • The climb and descent profile is integrated in 250 ft steps, using wind and temperature at each level from a multi-model cross-section along the route (Open-Meteo), so ground speed and fuel per leg follow the real winds.
  • Fuel follows the EASA scheme (taxi, trip, contingency, alternate, final reserve), alternates are checked against the NCO.OP.143 planning minima using the TAF at the ETA.
  • Weather comes from AWC and Open-Meteo, NOTAMs from the FAA NOTAM Search, airspace from openAIP, nav data from FAA NASR and national AIPs.
  • The whole site runs on a single Cloudflare Worker with D1.

Plans

VFR planning is Pilot VFR (EUR 25/year), IFR planning is Pilot IFR (EUR 30/year), both together are EUR 35/year: metarandtaf.com/pricing

It is a planning aid only, not an official briefing or flight plan. Feedback from pilots and developers is very welcome.