Windy IFR Planner » Beta Guide

Windy IFR Planner — Beta Guide

From first ICAO to flying the route — how each part of the plugin works.

1. Installing

The plugin lives at /software/windy-ifr-plugin. Five steps total: open Windy → developer mode → paste plugin URL → install → launch.

You only do this once per browser. Subsequent visits to Windy show the plugin in the regular plugin menu.

2. Airport Entry

The Departure and Destination fields autocomplete from a bundled airport database (~75,000 airports). Type any portion of an ICAO code or name; pick from the dropdown.

Tab out of the field after typing — if your input exactly matches an ICAO, the airport auto-selects on blur. The Find route button only enables when both fields hold a real airport.

Tip: recently-used airports appear at the top of the dropdown. The plugin remembers them across sessions (in your browser only — nothing is sent to any server).

3. Aircraft Setup

The Aircraft dropdown ships with 7 profiles, each carrying approximate POH cruise values:

  • PA46-350P Mirage — 213 KTAS, FL250 ceiling, 1143 fpm climb, 1000 fpm descent (default)
  • TBM 940 — 330 KTAS, FL310 ceiling, 2380 fpm climb
  • Cirrus SR22T — 213 KTAS, FL250 ceiling
  • Beechcraft Baron 58 — 200 KTAS, ~FL207 ceiling
  • Beechcraft Bonanza G36 — 174 KTAS, ~FL185 ceiling
  • Cessna 182 — 145 KTAS, ~FL181 ceiling
  • Custom — placeholder for a generic GA airframe

Switching the aircraft updates the flight envelope (the magenta climb-cruise-descent line on the profile chart), the service ceiling enforcement (cruise altitudes above ceiling generate a critical advisory), and the cruise recommendation (Mirage at FL280 will get clamped to FL250; recommendation engine respects this).

Cruise altitude sets your planned flight level in feet. The chart, advisories, route colors on the map, and recommendation all key off this value. Change it any time — the entire UI refreshes within a second.

4. Route Generation

Click Find route. The plugin queries multiple route providers in parallel:

  • FAA Preferred Routes — published high-altitude routes between major city pairs. Highest confidence (85%) when found. Multiple routes typically returned.
  • Historical / mock — fallback for city pairs without an FAA preferred route. Lower confidence.
  • DIRECT — always last in the list as the great-circle fallback.

Each result shows the route string (e.g., FORCK3 FORCK ELD MERDN ORRKK HOBTT3), provider, and confidence. The active route (the one displayed on the chart + map) has a magenta ▶ marker. Click any route in the list to make it active; the chart, map polyline, and advisories rebuild against the new route.

Real waypoint geometry: the plugin parses the route string token-by-token against an FAA NASR FIX database (~70,000 named fixes). Known fixes contribute to the polyline; unrecognized tokens (SIDs, airways, STAR names) are skipped. The result is a multi-segment polyline through the real fixes — not a great-circle approximation.

5. Vertical Profile

The chart below the routes list shows the vertical slice through the active route, sampled at 12 points along the great-circle/waypoint path:

  • Green polygon — terrain elevation along the route.
  • Translucent white bands — cloud layers, with horizontal blur for a soft cloud-like appearance.
  • Magenta / blue / pale-cyan rectangles — icing zones (severe / moderate / light).
  • Yellow / orange / red hatched bands — turbulence zones (light / moderate / severe). Derived from a Richardson-number heuristic on Windy's wind + temperature data.
  • Cyan dashed line — freezing level along the route.
  • White dashed line + label — your selected cruise altitude.
  • Magenta envelope — your aircraft's climb-cruise-descent path. Truncates if the route is too short to reach your cruise. Clamps to the aircraft's service ceiling.
  • Winds Aloft table — route-averaged head/tail/crosswind at FL180, FL200, FL250, and your cruise altitude.

Hover anywhere on the chart for an inline tooltip showing terrain, cloud, icing, turb, and wind data at that exact route position + altitude. Wheel zooms in/out; click-drag pans.

6. Advisories & Pilot Summary

Above the chart, the pilot summary banner distills the route into 3-5 sentences: cruise + aircraft, route-averaged tailwind, top hazards. The left border color reflects the highest-severity advisory present.

Below the chart, the Advisories panel lists up to 5 prioritized concerns. Each advisory has a severity (critical / warning / info) and a category (icing / turbulence / terrain / cloud / freezing / aircraft). Examples:

  • Severe icing FL150-FL190 — critical, icing
  • Cruise altitude icing conflict — critical, icing (fires when cruise altitude intersects any icing zone)
  • Cruise FL280 exceeds PA46-350P Mirage ceiling FL250 — critical, aircraft
  • Top of climb at 55 NM (16 min) — info, aircraft
  • Cloud tops FL220 — info, cloud
  • Freezing level 11,500 ft — info, freezing

Advisories sort by severity then by category priority (icing > turbulence > terrain > aircraft > cloud > freezing). The display is capped at 5 — the most-actionable surface to the top.

7. Cruise Recommendation

Next to the cruise altitude input, a magenta-bordered callout shows the plugin's recommended cruise for the active route + aircraft. Format:

Recommended: FL250
+19 kt tailwind · no icing · cloud tops FL220
[Use this]

The engine walks 1,000-ft increments from 3,000 ft to your aircraft's service ceiling. Each candidate is scored on:

  • Wind — signed tailwind/headwind at that altitude
  • Icing — severity-weighted penalty if cruise intersects an icing zone
  • Turbulence — same for turbulence
  • Cloud — penalty for cruise inside a BKN or OVC layer
  • Terrain — rule out below 1,000 ft AGL; mild penalty at 1,000-2,000 ft AGL
  • Service ceiling — hard rule-out

Click Use this to copy the recommendation into the cruise input. The button hides when your current cruise already matches the recommendation.

8. Map Interaction

The active route appears on the Windy map as a polyline with sub-segments colored by hazard at your cruise altitude:

  • Teal — clear segment, no hazards at cruise
  • Gray — cruise inside a BKN/OVC cloud layer
  • Yellow / orange / red — light / moderate / severe turbulence at cruise
  • Pale cyan / blue / magenta — light / moderate / severe icing at cruise

Endpoint markers show your departure (green) and arrival (red) airports. Intermediate fixes get small magenta dots with their ident labels.

Bidirectional sync: hover the chart → a yellow marker tracks the corresponding geographic position on the map. Hover the colored polyline on the map → the chart's yellow crosshair tracks smoothly along the route, with the data tooltip pinned to the chart's top-right corner.

The map auto-fits the route on first load and re-fits on window resize. Switching aircraft or cruise altitude does NOT re-zoom the map (your framing stays put).

9. Comparing Routes

With multiple routes in the list, click Compare routes. The plugin computes a vertical slice for each route (~2-3 seconds per route, ~10-15 seconds for 5 routes) and scores them:

  • BEST WIND — most tailwind / least headwind at your cruise altitude
  • LOWEST ICING — least NM of route inside an icing zone at cruise
  • LOWEST TURB — same for turbulence
  • BEST TERRAIN — highest minimum-clearance from terrain
  • OVERALL BEST — top overall score

Each route gets a colored badge + a one-line reason ("+19 kt tail · 12 NM icing") + a normalized 0-100 score. The non-active routes appear on the map as gray dashed polylines alongside your selected route, so you see at a glance how each alternate diverges.

Click a different route in the list to make it active; the previously active one flips to a gray dashed alternate. Scoring is keyed to your cruise altitude + aircraft — changing either flags the comparison as stale; click Recompare to refresh.

10. Known Limitations

  • Beta software. Bugs may exist. Report at feedback@snickitybit.com.
  • Airway expansion not implemented. Tokens like Q34, J103 aren't expanded into their constituent fixes — the polyline draws a straight line between the fixes on either side.
  • SID/STAR procedures not expanded. Tokens like FORCK3 (SID name) are skipped. The route polyline starts at the first resolved fix.
  • Turbulence is derived, not forecast. Computed from a Richardson-number heuristic on Windy's wind + temperature data across pressure levels. Accurate at strong shear bands, less reliable at finer scales. Not a substitute for AIRMET TANGO / SIGMET data.
  • Aircraft POH values are approximate. Use real performance data for your specific airframe + density altitude. The plugin numbers are reasonable mid-range cruise estimates for planning, not a substitute for the POH.
  • Decision support only. See the disclaimer on the software page.
  • Clicking the map polyline triggers Windy's wind-tooltip popup (Windy's own feature). Hover-driven sync between chart and map works around this — hover the polyline rather than clicking it.

11. Privacy & Telemetry

The beta sends a small amount of anonymous telemetry to help us improve it:

  • Usage events via Firebase Analytics (Google) — plugin opened, route computed, aircraft changed, cruise changed, route selected, compare clicked, recommendation accepted. Plus the plugin version. No identifying data.
  • Crash reports via our Firestore database — JavaScript error messages + stack traces + browser user agent + plugin URL.

We don't collect ICAOs, route strings, aircraft type, cruise altitude, location, or any account/cookie identifier. Pure aggregated counters + crashes.

To opt out: don't install the plugin during the beta. A user-facing opt-out toggle is on the roadmap.

12. Feedback

This is a beta. Your feedback drives the roadmap.

Email feedback@snickitybit.com

Especially useful: bug reports with the route + aircraft + cruise altitude + browser, feature requests for advisory rules or scoring weights, and notes on what reads cleanly vs. what doesn't.