1.1 What Nimble Preflight is

One place for the whole pre-flight picture

Nimble Preflight is an independent aviation reference tool that gathers weather, NOTAMs, advisories, charts, flight tracking and a full set of pilot calculators into a single, fast, offline-capable app. It is built to sit beside your official briefing workflow — never to replace it.

Think of it as the app you open in the crew room, on the bus, at the gate: everything you want to glance at before you ever touch a certified source is one or two taps away, and most of it keeps working when the signal doesn't.

1.1.1 First launch — two gates, once

The very first time you open the app, two screens appear in order and never again:

• The legal disclaimer — a full-screen statement of what the app is and is not. Read it, then tap I Understand and Accept to continue. (You can re-read it any time from the menu → Legal Disclaimer.)
• Crash-report consent — a dialog asking whether to share anonymized diagnostics. Your choice is remembered and can be changed later in Settings → Privacy.

1.2 At a glance — the app shell

One frame around every screen

Almost every screen in the app renders inside the same slim header. Learn it once and you always know where you are, what time it is in Zulu, and how to get to the menu.

• 1
  NP logo / back arrowOn the Watchlist you see the NP logo; on every other screen it becomes a back arrow to return one step.
• 2
  Screen titleThe name of where you are, shown in capitals (e.g. WATCHMAP, SETTINGS).
• 3
  Airport searchThe magnifier opens airport search from the home screen.
• 4
  Live Zulu clockA permanent HH:MMZ reference (e.g. 08:58Z). All aviation data in the app is timestamped in UTC — the clock keeps that reference always in view.
• 5
  Menu buttonOpens the navigation drawer (see section 3).

1.3 Architecture — three ways to move

Everything is at most two taps away

The app is organized around three complementary ways to navigate. You'll settle into your own habit within a day — most pilots live on the Watchlist and jump to the Dashboard for tools.

1.3.1 A · The home action bar

On the Airports Watchlist (the home screen), a bar sits at the bottom with three actions:

1.3.2 B · The Pilot Dashboard — every module on one grid

The Dashboard is the launch pad for everything that isn't the Watchlist itself. Twenty-one tiles, in this fixed order:

1.3.3 C · The menu drawer

The menu button (top-right) opens the drawer for app-level destinations, in this order:

1.4 What you can do

What this foundation makes possible

Before any single feature, the app itself gives you a way of working. Here is what the shell, the navigation and the global settings let a pilot actually do.

1.5 How to use it — set your landing page

Make the app open where you work

The single most useful thing to set up first: which screen greets you on launch. By default the app opens on the Airports Watchlist. If you spend more time in the tools, point it at the Dashboard instead.

1.5.1 Set it in four taps

• Open the menu → Settings.
• Under App Landing Page — captioned WHICH SCREEN OPENS WHEN YOU LAUNCH THE APP — choose Watchlist or Dashboard.
• Tap SAVE. The status bar confirms ✓ PREFERENCES SAVED.
• Next launch, the app opens straight to your choice.

1.5.2 Which one should you pick?

1.6 Settings that shape the whole app

Three global preferences worth knowing early

Most settings belong to individual features (and are covered in those guides). Three of them, though, change how the entire app looks and behaves.

1.6.1 Text Size

Under Visual Preferences, Text Size offers S / M / L (default M) and rescales the whole interface — smaller for a dense overview, larger for a dark cockpit or reading glasses. Save to apply.

1.6.2 Crash reports (Privacy)

Under Privacy, Send crash reports (on by default) shares anonymized diagnostics that help fix problems fast. Its subtitle states the rule plainly: "Share anonymized diagnostics to improve reliability. Opt-out applies going forward." Turn it off any time — the change applies from that point on.

1.6.3 App Version

At the bottom of Settings, App Version shows the exact build you're running — the first thing to quote if you ever send feedback about a bug.

1.7 Staying in the loop

Announcements & feedback

1.7.1 Announcements

The Announcements entry in the menu is an in-app news feed from the developer — new features, data-source notes, known issues. A badge counts unread items, so you'll notice when something new lands without leaving the app.

1.7.2 Send Feedback — a direct line to the flight deck

Because the app is built by a working pilot, feedback isn't a black hole. Open Send Feedback, then:

• Pick a type — Bug Report, Feature Request, Data Accuracy Concern, Usability Issue, or General Feedback.
• Tag the module(s) your feedback is about, so it's routed correctly.
• Write it and send. Data-accuracy reports get particular attention — if a report ever looks wrong, this is the fastest way to flag it.

1.8 Good to know & safety

Limits, habits & the safety frame

1.8.1 Good to know

• Titles appear in capitals. Screen names render uppercased in the header (e.g. SETTINGS) even where this guide writes them normally — same screen, just the shell's styling.
• The back arrow always steps back one screen; from your landing screen it closes search or returns home rather than exiting the app.
• Refresh is gentle on the sources. Across the app, manual refresh has a quiet 30-second cooldown — tap again too soon and nothing happens, by design, to protect the shared data feeds.
• Announcements badge only clears once you open the Announcements screen.

1.8.2 The safety frame that applies to every feature

Every feature guide in this series inherits this frame. Individual features add their own specific disclaimers where they matter (charts, AI-free decoders, flight tracking, calculators) — but this one is always in force.

Built for pilots. By a pilot. Next in the series: the Airports Watchlist — your home base.

2.1 At a glance

Anatomy of the Watchlist

The Watchlist is the app's home screen. It holds the airports you fly to — up to a hundred of them — and shows each one's raw METAR, raw TAF and active NOTAM count without you opening anything.

• 1
  Fleet lineHow many airports you are monitoring (e.g. 47 stations monitored) and a data-age indicator (e.g. ● Data 48m old) — the honest age of what you're looking at.
• 2
  Country group headerFlag, country name and a count chip. Optional — turned on with Group by Country.
• 3
  Identity blockICAO in large type, IATA badge, then CITY, COUNTRY.
• 4
  NOTAM chipAmber NOTAM (26) — the active count. Tap it to jump straight into that airport's NOTAMs.
• 5
  Speaker buttonReads the reports aloud. It turns red while speaking; tap again to stop.
• 6
  METAR panelLabelled METAR. The raw observation, unmodified.
• 7
  TAF panelLabelled TAF. The raw forecast. Can be hidden for a denser list.

2.2 What you can do

What a pilot actually gets out of this screen

The Watchlist is deliberately boring in the best sense: it answers "what's the weather doing at the fields I care about?" in one glance, repeatedly, all day.

2.3 How to use it

The five things you'll do every day

2.3.1 Add an airport

• On the Watchlist, tap Airport in the bottom bar. The search overlay opens.
• Type an ICAO (e.g. GMMN), an IATA code or part of the name.
• Select the airport from the results — it is added to your list and its weather starts loading immediately.

2.3.2 Remove an airport

Swipe the card off the list. That's the only removal gesture, and the app reminds you of it if you ever hit the cap: "Maximum is 100 airports. Swipe-to-remove on home screen."

2.3.3 Open the full airport page

Tap anywhere on a card (outside the NOTAM chip and the speaker) to open Airport Detail — runway wind analysis, field data, communications, VOLMET coverage, sun times. Covered in its own guide.

2.3.4 Refresh

Use the refresh control in the header, or pull down on the list. Everything reloads in the background and the data-age line updates.

2.3.5 Listen to a briefing

• Tap the speaker button on any card. It turns red while speaking.
• The first playback of each session is prefixed with a spoken reminder: "This is a reference briefing from Nimble Preflight. Not an official weather briefing."
• Tap the button again — it becomes a stop icon — to end playback.

2.4 Reading a card

Every element, and what it's telling you

2.5 Settings that shape this screen

Two toggles change how the list feels

Setting	Default	Effect
METAR Only Watchlist	Off	Hides the TAF panel from every card — "Hide TAF from airport cards on home screen". Roughly doubles how many fields fit on screen.
Group by Country	Off	Groups airports by country with flags and a per-country count — "Group watchlist airports by country with flags".

Both live in Settings → Watchlist. Remember to tap SAVE.

2.6 Limits & good to know

The numbers and the habits

2.6.1 Habits worth forming

• Check the age line before you trust the list. ● Data 48m old means exactly that — the reports are 48 minutes old, not wrong, just old.
• Use the NOTAM chip as a triage tool. Read the fields with the biggest counts first; that's usually where the surprise lives.
• Keep the list honest. Airports you no longer fly still consume a slot and add noise — swipe them off.
• Grouping helps most above ~15 airports. Below that, a flat list is faster to scan.

2.7 Safety

What this screen is — and is not

The Watchlist shows raw METAR and TAF from NOAA's Aviation Weather Center and NOTAM counts from the FAA Notice to Air Missions System, displayed unmodified. That makes it excellent for awareness and useless as an authority: it is a mirror of a source, not the source itself, and it carries no guarantee of completeness or timeliness.

• Voice briefings are reference only — the spoken preamble says so before the first report of each session.
• NOTAM counts follow the source. The number reflects what the NOTAM service returns for that field; your official briefing remains the authority on completeness.
• Nothing on this screen is a clearance to go. It tells you what to look at, not what to decide.

Built for pilots. By a pilot. Next in the series: Airport Detail — everything about one field.

3.1 At a glance

One field, top to bottom

Tap any Watchlist card and you land here. The page is one long scroll, always in the same order, so your eye learns the layout once and never hunts again.

• 1
  METAR blockThe raw observation. With archiving on you get a scrollable trail of recent reports, the newest tagged LATEST. A speaker button reads it aloud.
• 2
  TAF blockTitled TERMINAL AERODROME FORECAST (TAF) — the raw forecast, its own speaker button.
• 3
  [OFFLINE] tagAppended to a report when you're reading cached data rather than a fresh fetch.
• 4
  Runway wind analysisA scaled diagram of the field's runways with the current wind drawn over it, plus a chip showing the wind and the METAR it was taken from.

3.2 What you can do

What this page lets a pilot accomplish

This is the deepest single-field view in the app — and the part that stays useful when everything else needs a signal.

3.3 How to use it

The moves that matter

3.3.1 Open the page

Tap an airport card on the Watchlist — anywhere except the NOTAM chip or the speaker button. To go back, use the arrow in the header.

3.3.2 Read the weather trail

• Look for the LATEST tag — that's the most recent observation.
• Scroll the archive to walk backwards through earlier reports and read the trend.
• If the block says No archived reports yet., the app simply hasn't collected any observations for this field yet.

Prefer a single current report instead of a trail? Turn Persistent METAR Archiving off in Settings — the block becomes CURRENT METAR with just the latest observation and its timestamp.

3.3.3 Use the runway wind analysis

• Check the wind chip — it shows the direction and speed being drawn, and which METAR it came from.
• Read the diagram: the wind arrow against the runway alignment gives you the headwind/crosswind geometry at a glance.
• Need exact figures for your limits? Take them to the Wind Component calculator (Pilot toolkit) — this page shows the picture, that one does the numbers.
• If the field has no runway data bundled, the block says so plainly rather than drawing something approximate.

3.3.4 Reach the field

• Open COMMUNICATIONS — ATIS / AWOS / ASOS frequencies are listed in MHz.
• Tap a phone number to dial it directly.
• Long-press a number to copy it instead — the app confirms with Phone number copied.

3.3.5 Check VOLMET coverage

Scroll to VOLMET COVERAGE: every station that broadcasts this ICAO, each with an HF or VHF badge and its frequencies (kHz for HF, MHz for VHF). This is the reverse of the VOLMET directory — instead of asking "what does this station cover?", you're asking "who covers my field?".

3.4 Section by section

The page in display order

Always the same seven blocks, always in this sequence.

3.5 Settings that shape this page

The METAR archive is yours to size

Setting	Default	Effect
Persistent METAR Archiving	On	"Save fetched METARs to local history log" — turns the METAR block into a trail instead of a single report.
METAR History Depth	5 reports	How many observations the archive keeps per airport. Slider, 1 to 5.
CLEAR METAR HISTORY	—	Wipes the stored archive for all airports; confirms with METAR History Cleared.

All three live in Settings → Data. Tap SAVE to apply.

3.6 Offline behaviour & good to know

What survives with no signal

3.6.1 Good to know

• Section titles render in capitals on screen, as everywhere in the app.
• The runway diagram follows the METAR, not the tower — if the observation is an hour old, so is the wind you're looking at. Check the timestamp on the chip.
• Data older than 60 minutes triggers the app's stale warning: "Data is n minutes old. Verify current conditions from an official source."
• Frequencies and phone numbers are reference data updated with app releases — verify against the current AIP before relying on them operationally.
• Refresh shares the app-wide 30-second silent cooldown.

3.7 Safety

Where this page stops

Airport Detail is a reference page. It presents published reports unmodified, geometry from a bundled database, and two astronomical figures computed locally. It performs no aeronautical decision-making, offers no performance calculation, and asserts nothing about the suitability of a runway.

• The runway wind picture is geometry, not clearance. It shows the observed wind against runway alignment — it does not know your aircraft, your limits, the surface state or the traffic situation.
• Wind components derived from a METAR are in the TRUE frame. Convert before comparing against limits expressed against magnetic runway headings.
• Sun times are approximate and their provenance is stated on screen — treat them as planning aids.
• Frequencies require an AIP cross-check. They are bundled data, not a live aeronautical publication.

Built for pilots. By a pilot. Next in the series: NOTAMs — airport and FIR.

4.1 Two screens, one source

Aerodrome notices and FIR notices

Nimble Preflight splits NOTAMs the way your briefing does: what affects a specific aerodrome, and what affects the airspace you'll cross. Both come from the FAA Notice to Air Missions System and are displayed as issued.

4.2 At a glance

The airport NOTAM screen, top to bottom

• 1
  CountActive NOTAMs (26) — the total for the field. This number never changes when you filter.
• 2
  Source lineSource: FAA NMS-API. Data for reference only. — or the [OFFLINE] variant when you're on cached data.
• 3
  Freshness dotLast synced: 49 min ago with a coloured dot — green, amber or red by age. See §7.
• 4
  Filter barFilter by date/time — collapsed until you tap it.
• 5
  NOTAM cardsCollapsed to two lines each. Tap to expand, long-press to copy.

4.3 What you can do

What this gives a pilot

NOTAMs are where the surprises live. The value is triage: knowing which notices deserve your attention, and being able to reach the original message in one tap.

4.4 Reading a card

Every badge, in order

Each card packs a lot into two collapsed lines. Here is what every element means, top-left to bottom-right.

4.4.1 Classification badge

First on the card, when the notice carries a classification. The colour is the fastest filter your eye can apply:

If a notice carries no recognised classification, no badge is drawn at all.

4.4.2 The rest of the collapsed card

4.4.3 When you expand

Tapping anywhere on the card header opens a drawer underneath with up to four extras:

• VIEW ON MAP — only when the notice carries a polygon. Opens the affected area on a map.
• RAW — opens the complete original message (next section).
• The location code and the Q-code (e.g. QMXLC), right-aligned in small type.

4.5 The original message

RAW NOTAM

Every notice with raw text offers a RAW chip in its expanded drawer. It opens a dedicated page titled RAW NOTAM, with the notice number underneath and its classification as a pill.

4.5.1 The metadata block

Above the message, a card of labelled rows — each one omitted entirely when the notice doesn't carry that field:

4.5.2 The message itself

Below the metadata, the complete ICAO message in monospace on a dark panel — including the Q line and items A) through G) as published. The text is selectable: press and drag to select any part of it and copy exactly what you need.

4.6 Filtering by time window

Narrow the list to the hours you're flying

4.6.1 How to set it

• Tap Filter by date/time. The panel expands.
• Tap From (UTC) — it reads Tap to set until you choose — and pick a date and time in UTC.
• Do the same for To (UTC).
• Tap Apply Filter. The button stays disabled until both bounds are set.

Chosen values display as 12 MAR 26 0800Z. If you set a From that is after your To, the app refuses with "From" must be before "To" and keeps the panel open.

4.6.2 Once applied

The bar collapses to a single line showing your window — ⏱ 12 MAR 26 0800Z — 12 MAR 26 1800Z — beside a pill reading 4 of 37. A small ✕ clears the filter and restores the full list.

4.6.3 What the filter actually does

It keeps every notice whose validity overlaps your window. Two deliberate exceptions:

• Permanent notices are always kept. Anything marked PERM, UFN, UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE or EST survives every filter — it has no end to compare against.
• Unreadable dates are kept, not dropped. If a notice's start or end can't be interpreted, it stays in the list. The filter never hides something it doesn't understand.

If your window matches nothing, the screen says so and reminds you of the first rule: No NOTAMs in this time window · Permanent NOTAMs are always shown above.

4.7 FIR NOTAMs

Building an airspace picture

The FIR screen works by accumulation: you add regions one at a time and their notices merge into a single list you can search.

4.7.1 Adding and removing FIRs

• Type a FIR code in the box — the hint shows the expected shape: Add FIR (e.g. GMMM).
• Press SEARCH or your keyboard's enter key. The results are added to whatever is already listed.
• Repeat for every region along your route. There is no limit on how many you add.
• Remove one with the ✕ on its chip, or clear everything with CLEAR ALL.

4.7.2 The status strip

Under your FIR chips, a line summarises the state: the total notice count, how many FIRs are loaded, how long ago you refreshed (just now, 5m ago, 2h05m ago), CLEAR ALL, and a refresh button.

4.7.3 Searching inside the results

The Filter by keyword… box scans four things at once — the notice text, the raw text, the notice number and the FIR code — and keeps anything that matches. It's the fastest way to answer "is there anything about this navaid, this runway, this danger area?" across several regions at once.

The date/time filter works exactly as on the airport screen, and both filters combine.

4.7.4 What persists

• Your FIR list is remembered between sessions. Reopen the screen and it reloads the same regions and re-fetches them automatically.
• When more than one FIR is loaded, each card gains a FIR badge so you can see which region a notice came from.
• Refresh has a silent 30-second cooldown, as everywhere in the app.

4.8 Freshness & offline

How old is what you're reading?

This is the most important section in this guide. The two NOTAM screens tell you about data age in different ways, and one of them tells you much less than the other.

4.8.1 The airport screen — a coloured dot and a banner

Under the source line, Last synced: … carries a dot whose colour encodes the age:

And when the app had to fall back to stored data because the network failed, a yellow banner appears above everything: OFFLINE — Showing cached data from 23 min ago, and the source line switches to its [OFFLINE] variant.

4.8.2 The FIR screen — an age chip in the status strip

4.8.3 How long data is kept

• Stored notices remain usable for up to 7 days. Within that period the app can serve them without going to the network at all.
• The airport screen has no refresh control. It loads when you open it. To force new data, leave the screen and come back.
• The FIR screen does have a refresh button, with the standard 30-second cooldown.
• If a fetch fails on the airport screen you'll see NOTAM Fetch Failed with Failed to load NOTAMs — check your connection. There is no retry button — go back and reopen.
• On the FIR screen a failure appears as a brief red message naming a FIR. When several are loading at once it may name the wrong one — retry the search if you're unsure.

4.9 Settings

One toggle, two reading styles

In Settings → NOTAMs. Tap SAVE.

4.10 Safety

Where these screens stop

Both screens are a reading surface over a third-party feed. They fetch notices and display them; they do not certify coverage, do not guarantee a feed is complete or current, and do not replace the NOTAM section of an official briefing.

• Read D) before you conclude anything. Validity says when a notice exists; the schedule says when it bites. Reading only the first is the commonest way to misjudge a NOTAM.
• Check the age every time. Stored notices remain readable for up to a week, and the FIR screen signals age only through a small chip.
• Filtering hides. Any time window narrows what you see, by design. Clear it before concluding a field is quiet.
• The count is not a coverage guarantee. It reflects the active notices returned for that field at fetch time — your official briefing remains the authority on completeness.

Built for pilots. By a pilot. Next in the series: Advisories — SIGMET, AIRMET and the hazard map.

5.1 What this is for

The radio fallback, catalogued

VOLMET is meteorological information broadcast continuously to aircraft in flight — a voice loop of aerodrome weather, transmitted on HF for oceanic and remote areas and on VHF around terminal areas. Nimble Preflight carries the directory: which station broadcasts which airports, on which frequencies, and when.

5.1.1 Why a bundled directory matters

The station list ships inside the app — there is no server call behind this screen. That pairing is deliberate: the moments you actually reach for VOLMET are the moments you have no data connection. Mid-Atlantic, out of ATIS range, datalink unavailable. The directory works in airplane mode because it was never online to begin with.

5.2 At a glance

Anatomy of a station card

Open Volmet from the Pilot Dashboard. Stations are grouped by region, each group headed by the region name and a count.

• 1
  Search fieldHint: Search Station, Location, Region or ICAO... — four different ways in, including the ICAO of the field you care about.
• 2
  Type filterAll · VHF · HF, with a live count of matching stations.
• 3
  Region headerThe region name in capitals with the number of stations it holds.
• 4
  Station name & type badgeThe station, tagged HF or VHF, with its location underneath.
• 5
  FrequenciesHeaded FREQUENCIES (kHz) on HF stations, OPERATIONAL FREQUENCIES on VHF — then one chip per frequency.
• 6
  Broadcast airportsUnder BROADCAST AIRPORT ICAOS, a chip for every field the station reads out.

5.3 What you can do

What a pilot gets out of it

5.4 How to use it

Three ways to find what you need

5.4.1 Find the station for a specific airport

• Open Volmet from the Pilot Dashboard.
• Type the ICAO in the search field — the list narrows to stations that broadcast it.
• Read the frequencies on the matching card. Note them before you need them.

5.4.2 Browse a band

• Tap HF or VHF to filter by type. The live counter shows how many stations match.
• Scroll by region — each region header carries its own station count.
• Tap All to clear the filter.

5.4.3 Search by name, place or region

The same search box also accepts a station name, a location or a region — useful when you know roughly where you are but not which station serves the area. If nothing matches, the screen says so plainly: No stations matching your search.

5.5 Reading a station card

Every field, and the ones that stay hidden

5.6 The other way round

VOLMET coverage from an airport's page

The same data powers a second, quieter feature. On any Airport Detail page, the VOLMET COVERAGE block lists every station that broadcasts that field — name, HF/VHF badge and frequencies.

Both views read the same bundled directory, so they never disagree.

5.7 Good to know & safety

What bundled data means for you

5.7.1 Good to know

• No network, ever. This screen makes no server call — nothing to refresh, nothing to wait for, nothing to fail.
• Updated with app releases. Because the directory ships inside the app, it changes when you update the app — not continuously. A frequency changed by NOTAM or AIP amendment will not appear here until a release carries it.
• Regions are groupings for browsing, not airspace boundaries.
• Search is broad on purpose — station, location, region or ICAO all hit the same box.

5.7.2 Safety

The footer states the rule for this screen, and it is not decoration:

• The AIP is the authority on frequencies, schedules and station status. This directory is a convenience copy.
• Station status is not shown. A station that has gone off air or been suspended since your last app update will still appear here as normal. If a broadcast is silent when you tune it, check the AIP rather than assuming a radio problem.
• What you hear on the radio is the weather; this screen only helps you find where to listen. The broadcast itself remains subject to your own reception and copying.
• VOLMET is not an official briefing. Like everything in the app, treat it as situational awareness and obtain an official briefing before flight.

Built for pilots. By a pilot. Next in the series: Advisories — SIGMET, AIRMET and the hazard map.

6.1 What you're looking at

Five families, five colours

The Advisories tile gathers every in-flight hazard message the app carries. The screen header names them all: SIGMET · AIRMET · GAMET · VA · TC. Each family keeps one colour everywhere in the app — on the chips, on the cards, on the polygons.

Sources: Deutscher Wetterdienst (DWD) Data Server and NOAA Aviation Weather Center. Messages are displayed as issued.

6.2 What you can do

What this gives a pilot

6.3 The screen, top to bottom

Header, filters, then the list

• 1
  Title blockADVISORIES over the family list, with a refresh button that becomes a spinner while loading.
• 2
  Add FIRA short field and an ADD button — pin the regions on your route.
• 3
  Map buttonSHOW ADVISORIES MAP, full width in gold (§6).
• 4
  Family chips with countsAll 286 · SIGMET 127 · AIRMET 22 · GAMET 73 · VA 58 · TC 6. The selected chip is outlined in its family colour.
• 5
  SearchHinted FIR or keyword (e.g. GMMM LECM or ETNA).
• 6
  Stats bar58 advisories of 596 · 310 hidden · DWD/NOAA · 1m ago — what you see, what was trimmed, the source, and the data age.
• 7
  The cardsType badge with family icon, phenomenon chip, volcano line on VA messages, the raw text, and VIEW ON MAP when a polygon exists.

6.3.1 The type chips

They are mutually exclusive — picking one replaces the previous choice rather than adding to it. All applies no family filter. The number on each chip counts what you would actually see if you tapped it, so a chip showing nothing has nothing behind it.

6.3.2 Reading the stats bar

A single line under the search field summarises the state, for example:

• 58 advisories of 596 — what your filters keep, out of what was fetched.
• 310 hidden — expired messages removed by the hide-expired setting (§8). On a busy day this is the largest number on the line, and it is worth noticing.
• DWD/NOAA — the sources behind the list.
• 1m ago — how long since data actually refreshed. Worth a glance every time.
• A FIR count also appears here once you have pinned regions.

6.4 How to use it

Turning a world list into your list

6.4.1 Pin the FIRs on your route

• Type a FIR code in the Add FIR field and tap ADD.
• Repeat for each region you'll cross. There is no limit on how many you pin.
• Remove one with the ✕ on its chip, or clear the lot with CLEAR ALL.

The field accepts 2 to 4 letters, A–Z only. Anything else — a digit, a five-letter entry — is silently ignored with no error message, as is a duplicate.

6.4.2 Search across everything at once

The keyword box does more than it looks. Your text is split into words and an advisory is kept if any word matches any of: the FIR code, the raw message text, a phenomenon code, a volcano name, or the message header. That means:

6.4.3 How the filters combine

They stack: each one narrows what the previous one left. If a search returns nothing, work backwards — clear the keyword, then the FIRs, then set the chip back to All.

6.5 Reading a card

Every element on an advisory card

6.6 The advisories map

Seeing the shape of the hazard

SHOW ADVISORIES MAP opens a full-screen world chart titled ADVISORIES MAP, with every drawn advisory as a translucent polygon in its family colour.

• 1
  Family togglesSIGMET and AIRMET, both on by default. An off toggle is drawn struck through and greyed.
• 2
  Live countDrawing 151 advisories • 138 polygons — how much is actually on the chart. One advisory can contribute several polygons, or none.
• 3
  PolygonsFamily colour: a solid outline over a translucent fill. Overlapping areas simply stack.
• 4
  Two-line labelsPhenomenon on top, level band underneath — EMBD TS / TOP FL450, VA CLD / FL000/140, ISOL TS / TOP FL400.

6.6.1 Working the map

• It opens zoomed right out, showing the whole world.
• Labels appear as you zoom in. Below a certain zoom level there are none at all — zoom in and each polygon gains its two-line tag. Level bands read FL010/450 for a band, TOP FL450 for a top only, FL100+ for a base only.
• Tap a polygon to open the full detail sheet for that advisory (§7). Labels never absorb the tap — you can press straight through them.
• Where polygons overlap, the tap opens the topmost one. Pan or zoom to reach the one underneath.

There is no refresh control on the map — it uses the advisories already loaded, and fetches once by itself only if it was opened with nothing to draw.

6.7 VIEW ON MAP

The single-advisory zone view

The gold VIEW ON MAP button on a card opens a different, focused map: that one advisory's area, alone. Its header names the phenomenon — for a volcanic-ash advisory, a VOLCANIC_ASH badge beside the title VA ZONE.

6.7.1 What the colours mean here

A volcanic-ash advisory doesn't describe a single area — it describes an area moving through time. This view draws each forecast step as its own outline:

OBSorange

The observed cloud, at the time of issue.

+6Hyellow

Forecast position six hours on.

+12Hcyan

Twelve hours.

+18Hgrey

Eighteen hours.

A line at the bottom counts what's drawn — Volcanic ash · 4 zones — and reminds you of the controls: Pinch to zoom · drag to pan.

6.7.1.1 Reading it like a pilot

• Look at the drift, not just the shape. Four outlines that stack almost on top of each other mean a slow-moving cloud; four that march across the chart mean rapid transport — and a very different planning problem six hours from now.
• Zoom out before you conclude anything. Zoomed in, an ash zone fills the screen and looks enormous. Zoomed out, it may be a small area a long way from your track — or squarely across it.
• The steps are forecasts. Only the OBS outline is an observation; the rest are the issuing centre's projection, and they carry all the uncertainty that implies.
• Read the message too. Levels and the ash-cloud description live in the raw text on the card, not on this map.

6.8 The detail sheet

The decoded view — and how to reach it

• 1
  Family & sequenceSIGMET badge and the sequence — often phonetic, as in #FOXTROT 24.
• 2
  Phenomenon, decodedThe code in large type — EMBD TS — with its plain-language name underneath: Embedded thunderstorms.
• 3
  Validity & countdownValid 311945 → 312345Z beside a green pill: 1h 11m left. It ticks down on its own.
• 4
  Decoded gridFIR · Levels · Movement · Evolution · Observation — here KZMA, TOP FL460, MOV ENE 20KT, NC (no change), OBS AT 1945Z.
• 5
  Raw textThe complete message, unabridged — header, FIR names, the full coordinate chain, tops, movement and trend.

6.8.1 What it decodes

Any field the message doesn't provide is simply not drawn — the sheet shows what exists rather than a grid of blanks.

6.9 Hide Expired Advisories

One setting, three surfaces

It lives in Settings → Advisories. With it on, the stats bar tells you how many were removed — 5 hidden — so you always know the list is being trimmed. Turn it off to keep recently-expired messages visible for trend awareness.

6.9.1 On the Watchmap it becomes time-aware

The same setting behaves more cleverly on the Watchmap: with a timeline cursor set, an advisory is shown only while the cursor sits inside its validity window. Scrub forward and messages expire one by one; scrub back and earlier ones return. Switch the setting off and every advisory in scope is drawn regardless of time.

6.10 States & safety

What the screen tells you when things go wrong

6.10.1 Safety

This screen mirrors two meteorological services. It parses alongside the message, never instead of it — the raw text is always one tap away, and the detail sheet shows it complete.

• Filtering hides. A type chip, a FIR set and a keyword all narrow the list. Before concluding an area is quiet, clear them.
• The map is not the whole picture. It draws SIGMET and AIRMET only — the list remains the complete view.
• Decoded fields are a reading aid. Levels, movement and evolution are extracted from the message; the message itself is the authority, and it is always shown.
• Check the age before you trust the list. There is no offline banner here — a stale list looks exactly like a fresh one.
• An advisory list is not a briefing. Obtain an official weather briefing from an approved source before any flight.

Built for pilots. By a pilot. Next in the series: Pilot Reports — what crews are actually encountering aloft.

7.1 Why this screen is different

Observations, not forecasts

Everything else in this app comes from a model, a forecast or an official bulletin. Pilot Reports comes from crews in the air — AIREPs and PIREPs transmitted by aircraft actually encountering the conditions they describe.

That makes this the screen you check when the forecast and reality might be diverging. A SIGWX chart tells you where turbulence is expected. A pilot report tells you that at 2233Z, at FL370, at a specific latitude and longitude, an aircraft got moderate turbulence. Those are different kinds of knowledge, and the second one is the kind you can act on with confidence.

Reports arrive through the Deutscher Wetterdienst global AIREP stream and are displayed with their original message intact.

7.2 At a glance

The screen

• 1
  Title blockPILOT REPORTS over WORLDWIDE AIREPs, with a refresh button that becomes a spinner while loading.
• 2
  Phenomenon chipsAll 477 · Turb 31 · Icing 17 · TS 8 · Wind Shear · Volcanic Ash 8. A chip with no number has nothing behind it.
• 3
  Origin filterHinted Filter by origin (e.g. KAWN) — the station that issued the report, not the aircraft's position.
• 4
  Stats bar477 reports · DWD · just now — how many you're seeing, the source, and the data age.
• 5
  Report cardsSeverity, callsign, flight level, age — then the raw message.

7.3 What you can do

What a pilot gets out of it

7.4 Reading a report

Every element on a card

7.4.1 The severity badge and the left bar

First on the card, and the fastest read: how bad the crew said it was. The card's left accent bar carries the same colour.

7.4.2 The rest of the card

7.4.3 Phenomenon colours

The tags on the cards show the full token as transmitted; the filter chips at the top use short forms (Turb, TS). Same thing, two lengths.

7.5 Filtering

Two controls, in sequence

7.5.1 Phenomenon chips

Six chips, mutually exclusive — picking one replaces the previous choice. Each carries a live count, and a chip with no number has nothing to show.

7.5.2 The origin filter

Type up to four letters and the list keeps reports whose originating station starts with what you typed. Two things to know:

• It's the issuing station, not the aircraft's position. Filtering on K gives you reports issued by US stations, wherever the aircraft happened to be.
• It's a prefix match, not a search. There is no free-text search of the message body on this screen — if you want to find a word inside the raw text, you'll have to scan.

7.6 States & freshness

What the screen tells you

Refresh carries the app's standard silent 30-second cooldown — tap again too soon and nothing happens, with no message.

7.7 Safety

How to weigh a pilot report

Pilot reports are observations by other crews, relayed through a meteorological service and displayed here as transmitted. They are not verified, not standardised between operators, and not a forecast of what you will find.

• Severity is subjective. One crew's moderate is another's light. Aircraft type, weight and phase of flight all colour the judgement — a report from a light twin and one from a widebody are not the same measurement.
• Level and position are everything. A report is a point observation. Without matching the level and the position to your own, it tells you very little.
• Absence is not evidence. No turbulence reports along a route does not mean smooth air — it may simply mean nobody has flown it recently, or nobody reported.
• N/A means unstated, not nil. Read the raw text before dismissing a report.
• They inform, they don't clear. A pilot report is not an authorisation to proceed, and not a substitute for an official briefing.

Built for pilots. By a pilot. Next in the series: WX Charts — the big picture.

8.1 Five tabs, five jobs

Choosing the right chart

The WX Charts tile opens a five-tab screen. They are not variations on the same picture — each answers a different question, and knowing which one to reach for is most of the skill.

8.2 What you can do

What these charts let a pilot accomplish

8.3 Tab 1 — SIGWX

The classic significant weather chart

The WAFS high-level significant weather chart, covering FL250 to FL630 — the sheet every long-haul briefing pack contains.

8.3.1 Three choices, then view

• Pick a region from the grid labelled REGION — FL250–FL630: AFI · ASIA · EUR · INDOC · MID · NAMSAM · NAT · PACIF · SAM. It opens on EUR.
• Pick a valid time under VALID TIME — 0000, 0600, 1200 or 1800. It opens on 0600.
• Tap View SIGWX Chart. The chart opens full screen; pinch to zoom, drag to pan.

New to the symbology, or want a refresher? How to read SIGWX charts opens a built-in reference.

8.4 Tab 2 — WIND/TEMP

Upper winds and temperatures at your level

8.4.1 Region, then level, then time

• Pick a region under REGION.
• Pick a flight level under LEVEL. The available levels load for the region you chose — you'll briefly see Loading levels…, and No FLs available for this region if that region publishes none.
• Pick a VALID TIME, then tap View Wind/Temp Chart.

8.5 Tab 3 — ECMWF RAIN

Two days of precipitation, animated

A precipitation-rate forecast from the ECMWF model, animated from now to T+48.

• Choose a region from the dropdown. Until you do, the tab reads Select a region to view precipitation forecast.
• Play it with the play/pause button, or drag the scrubber to step frame by frame.
• Change speed — 0.5×, 1×, 2×, 4×.
• Read the frame label: the forecast step (T+0 … T+48), the valid time (09 JUL 00:00Z), and a counter showing where you are in the sequence.

A SYNCED chip shows how fresh the data is; refresh has the standard silent 30-second cooldown. While frames download you'll see Loading 6/17.

If a region fails to load you'll see Could not load forecast for [region] or No frames available, with a Retry button.

8.6 Tab 4 — SATELLITE

The global infrared loop

A single global product — no region to choose. The colourised infrared mosaic plays over a pannable, zoomable basemap with the same controls as the rain tab: play/pause, four speeds, a scrubber and a frame counter. Each frame is labelled with its valid time.

Legend opens the Satellite IR Legend sheet, noting: "Source: Deutscher Wetterdienst (DWD). Cloud-top temperature (°C)."

A SYNCED chip carries the data age; refresh shares the 30-second cooldown.

8.7 Tab 5 — IWXXM SIGWX

Significant weather as switchable layers

The modern counterpart to the PNG chart: the same WAFS significant weather rendered as vector layers on an interactive map, steppable through time.

8.7.1 The layer chips

Toggle each one independently. This is the tab's real advantage over the printed chart: on a busy sheet, switching off everything except ICE turns an unreadable tangle into a clear answer.

8.7.2 Playing it through time

• Play/pause and a scrubber step through the forecast steps, each labelled with its step and valid time.
• There is no speed selector on this tab — playback runs at a single fixed rate.
• A SYNCED chip carries the data age, and refresh has the usual 30-second cooldown.
• Frames are cached: an OFFLINE badge appears when you're viewing stored data.

8.7.3 Two badges worth tapping

If data can't be loaded you'll see No SIGWX data available offline or Could not load SIGWX forecast, with a Retry button.

8.8 Sources & safety

Who produced what you're looking at

8.8.1 Safety

• Four of five tabs are forecasts. Only the satellite loop shows observed conditions, and even that is minutes old by the time it reaches you.
• Never use the rain tab tactically. Model precipitation is not radar returns; it will not show you a gap between cells, and it is not intended to.
• Charts are regional snapshots. A SIGWX chart valid at 0600Z describes 0600Z. Check the frame either side of your time over the area.
• The vector SIGWX tab is experimental and says so. Cross-check anything you would act on.
• None of this is an official briefing. Obtain one from an approved source before any flight.

Built for pilots. By a pilot. Next in the series: Watchmap — everything on one chart.

9.1 At a glance

Everything on one chart

The Watchmap is the app's synthesis screen. Where every other feature answers one question, this one puts the answers side by side — your stations, your route, the hazards and the sky — and lets you move all of them through time together.

• 1
  Freshness chipOne dot summarising five data sources on a worst-source-wins rule — here green <1m, everything just synced. Tap it for the per-source breakdown; the refresh button sits beside it.
• 2
  Zulu clockThe map's own HH:MMZ reference, top-right.
• 3
  Route controlsLoad route and Create until a route is loaded — then a single chip, GMMN → LFPG, with a ✕ to clear it.
• 4
  Attribution lineDWD · NOAA · situational awareness only — the whole row is tappable and opens the legend.
• 5
  Tier-2 phenomenon pillsTROPO CB ICE TURB JET MARK — shown only while IWXXM is on.
• 6
  Tier-1 layer pillsWATCH SIGMET AIRMET ROUTE IWXXM SAT.
• 7
  TimelineT+12 · 01 AUG 00:00Z (3/15) — the forecast step, the valid time in Zulu, and your position in the sequence. One cursor driving several layers at once.
• 8
  Advisory labelsAppear as you zoom in: the phenomenon then the levels — EMBD TS / TOP FL390, MOD ICE FL160-260.

9.2 What you can do

What the Watchmap makes possible

9.3 The freshness chip

Five sources, one dot — worst wins

This chip is the most important control on the screen. The Watchmap pulls from five independent feeds, and rather than show you five ages it shows you the worst one.

9.3.1 Tap it for the breakdown

Tapping the chip opens a small menu listing all five sources with their individual ages:

Ages read Just now, 12 min ago, 2 hr 15 min ago, > 1 day ago, or Not yet synced. The rows are informational — tapping one just closes the menu. It updates itself even while open.

The refresh button beside the chip fetches all five in parallel — one failing source never blocks the others. It carries the app's usual silent 30-second cooldown and is never greyed out.

9.4 The layers

Two rows of pills, twelve switches

9.4.1 Tier 1 — the products

9.4.2 Tier 2 — the SIGWX phenomena

All six start on. They appear only while the Tier-1 IWXXM pill is on; switch IWXXM off and the whole row disappears, keeping your choices for when you switch it back.

9.5 The timeline

One cursor, three layers

The slider at the bottom is what makes the Watchmap more than a stack of overlays. Drag it and three things move together.

9.5.1 Reading the label

The line above the slider tells you where you are: T+48 · 10 JUL 12:00Z (15/15) — the forecast step, the valid time in Zulu, and your position in the sequence. In landscape the date is dropped to save room. With IWXXM off, the label shows just the time the cursor represents.

• It opens on "now". The cursor starts on the frame nearest the current time, not at the beginning of the sequence.
• One stop per frame — the slider snaps between frames rather than sliding continuously.
• The timeline only appears when it can do something: frame data must exist and at least one time-driven layer must be on.
• A small spinner beside the label means that frame is still loading — the previous one stays visible until it lands.

9.6 The satellite layer

Honest about time, not just about place

Switch SAT on and the infrared imagery is drawn under the other layers, with an opacity slider so you can balance it against them.

9.6.1 The ±30-minute rule

Satellite imagery is an observation at a moment, while the timeline cursor often points into the future. Rather than stretch old imagery across a forecast, the Watchmap applies a strict rule:

The opacity slider runs from 20% to 100% and shows its value beside it. It is the one Watchmap setting that is remembered between sessions.

9.7 Loading a route

Your track on the weather

• Tap Load route at the top-left and pick one of your saved routes.
• The great circle is drawn in magenta with its airports, and the chip becomes GMMN → LFPG.
• Clear it any time with the ✕ on the chip — no confirmation, and your watchlist dots come straight back.

No routes saved yet? The app says so — No saved routes found. You can create one in the Brief section. — and offers Go to Brief to take you there.

9.7.1 Reading the route airports

9.8 The legend & offline behaviour

Two things worth knowing before you rely on it

9.8.1 The legend sheet

Tap the attribution line at the bottom — the whole row is a button — and Map legend & sources opens, subtitled Layers currently available on this map.

Three blocks, in order:

• SATELLITE — the DWD cloud-top temperature scale, captioned "Source: Deutscher Wetterdienst (DWD). Cloud-top temperature (°C)." Colder tops are higher tops: the deep reds, magentas and whites at the top of the scale are the overshooting convection you would want to avoid.
• IWXXM SIGWX — the six phenomenon colours: Tropopause · Icing · Jet stream · CB / storms · Turbulence · Marker / other.
• ADVISORIES & ROUTE — SIGMET, AIRMET, Route line, Corridor / DEP / ARR airports, Alternate airports, Watchlist airports.

Then SOURCES & DISCLAIMERS names the provenance of each product in full — satellite, SIGWX and advisories — closing with "For situational awareness only. Not a substitute for an official weather briefing." and FOR SITUATIONAL AWARENESS ONLY.

9.8.2 What survives a restart — and what doesn't

Offline, it still opens with something to show. Advisories, satellite frames and the SIGWX manifest come back from the device, and the freshness ages are restored with them — so a map opened in airplane mode is honestly labelled rather than blank. Your watchlist dots are always rebuilt live, so they are there regardless.

9.9 Safety

What this map is not

The Watchmap draws published data over a schematic basemap. It has no navigation database, no terrain, no airspace structure, no traffic and no aircraft position. It is a briefing aid, and the great-circle line is a drawing, not a flight plan.

• Empty is ambiguous. An area with no polygon may be clear — or the advisory layer may have failed to load. The chip is the only way to tell the difference, and this screen never raises an error.
• Layers have edges. The vector SIGWX covers a defined band of latitudes and levels; outside it there is nothing to draw. Satellite imagery is hidden entirely outside the ±30-minute window.
• Forecast layers are forecasts. Scrubbing to T+48 shows you what a model expects, not what will be there.
• Not for navigation. The route line is schematic, drawn great-circle, with no terrain or airspace awareness whatsoever.
• Obtain an official briefing from an approved source before any flight.

Built for pilots. By a pilot. Next in the series: Brief — building the route and the briefing pack.

10.1 What Brief is for

One route, five views, one pack

Every other feature in the app answers a question about a place or a phenomenon. Brief answers a question about a flight: given this departure, this destination and these alternates, what does the app know?

10.2 What you can do

What Brief lets a pilot accomplish

10.3 Building the route

The ROUTE tab, step by step

• Enter the airports. Under AIRPORTS: DEP and DEST, each hinted ICAO. Under ALTERNATES (OPTIONAL): ALT1 and ALT2.
• Set the corridor — open CORRIDOR SETTINGS (§4). You can skip this: the defaults are sensible.
• Tap CALCULATE ROUTE.
• Pick what goes in the brief — corridor airports, FIRs, chart regions and levels (§5).
• Generate — the brief, the PDF, or both (§6).

Three more controls sit alongside: LOAD ROUTE and SAVE ROUTE for your saved set, and RESET to clear everything and start again.

10.4 Corridor settings

Deciding which fields count as "along the way"

The corridor is a band either side of the great circle. Anything inside it that passes your filters becomes a candidate for the brief.

Collapsed, the card summarises your choices as chips — ±50 NM, 6000 FT, and HELI or MIL when those are on — so you can see the settings without opening the panel.

10.5 Reading the result

Distance, track, and what to include

10.5.1 The result block

• Great-circle distance, with an NM / KM toggle.
• Initial true bearing, marked °T — degrees TRUE, not magnetic.
• Captioned FOR SITUATIONAL AWARENESS ONLY.

10.5.1.1 The corridor list

Every field inside your corridor that passed the filters, each with its ICAO and name. Tick the ones you want in the brief; the chip beside the header counts your selection, e.g. 4/15, and repeats the corridor width you used.

10.5.2 Three selection limits

At the limit, further taps simply do nothing — no dialog, no message. If a tick won't take, check the counter.

10.5.3 FIRs along the route

The app suggests the FIRs your great circle crosses, and you can add others. Each carries a badge showing where it came from — automatically derived, or added by you.

10.6 Generating

Filling the tabs, and exporting the pack

CALCULATE ROUTE→ Select→ GENERATE BRIEF→ 4 tabs filled

GENERATE BRIEF gathers the weather, FIR notices, advisories and charts for your selections and fills the other four tabs. GENERATE PDF BRIEF additionally produces a document you can share.

While the PDF runs the button reads GENERATING... and the app warns: "Generating briefing — may take up to 2 minutes on weak signal."

10.6.1 The two caps

10.7 Saving & reusing routes

Fifty routes, one tap away

• SAVE ROUTE stores the current route with its corridor settings — width, runway minimum and the helipad/military switches travel with it.
• LOAD ROUTE reopens any saved route, restoring those settings exactly.
• The limit is 50 saved routes. At the cap: Save Limit Reached — "You have 50 saved routes (the maximum). Delete an old route from the LOAD ROUTE screen to make room."
• VIEW ON MAP puts the route on the Watchmap; the Watchmap's own Load route reads the same saved set.
• RESET clears the form to start fresh.

10.8 Safety

What a Brief is, and what it is not

A Brief is a collection of published data, scoped to a route you described. It is not a flight plan, not an operational briefing, and not a navigation product. Everything it contains comes from the same third-party sources the rest of the app uses, with the same limits.

• The line is schematic. A great circle drawn between two points, with no airways, no terrain, no airspace and no procedures. It is a picture of direction, not a track to fly.
• No time, no fuel, no weight — by design. Nothing in a Brief should ever be compared against, or substituted for, an OFP figure.
• Corridor airports are candidates, not suitable alternates. The filter knows a runway length. It knows nothing about approach aids, ATC hours, customs, fire category, fuel availability or your operator's approval.
• FIR boundaries may be out of date. Verify against your flight plan.
• A Brief is a snapshot. Weather, notices and advisories were current when it was generated; a PDF read three hours later is history.
• Obtain an official briefing from an approved source before any flight.

Built for pilots. By a pilot. Next in the series: Flight Watch — tracking the aircraft you care about.

11.1 What Flight Watch is for

One aircraft, followed properly

Flight Watch is not a radar screen and not a fleet display. It follows one aircraft at a time — the one you actually need to know about — and keeps its progress on your lock screen while you get on with something else.

The situations it was built for are the ones every crew knows: the inbound aircraft you're taking over, the positioning flight that decides when your duty starts, the aircraft carrying the crew you're waiting on, a family member's arrival.

11.2 At a glance

The tracking view

• 1
  Identity & statusThe flight, its registration and type, with a status badge: EN-ROUTE, DEPARTED or LANDED. The red button stops tracking.
• 2
  Progress cardDeparture and arrival, a progress bar with the aircraft on it, 55% complete, and an ETA pill — ~1h 2m, or Landing shortly near the end.
• 3
  CALCULATED ESTIMATEThe honesty banner: Snapshot 7s ago — advancing by time. See §4.
• 4
  SYNC buttonSYNC • 9 left — pulls a fresh live position and shows what your budget has left.
• 5
  SCHEDULEDeparture and arrival times in Zulu, with the estimate underneath and any departure delay noted.
• 6
  LAST KNOWN DATAAltitude, speed and heading from the last live snapshot, with its age.
• 7
  Push NotificationsOff by default — switch it on to keep progress on your lock screen (§5).

11.3 How to use it

Finding your aircraft

• Open Flight Watch from the Pilot Dashboard.
• Under SEARCH FLIGHT OR AIRCRAFT, type into the field hinted REG / CALLSIGN / FLIGHT. Three formats work, as the helper line says: registration (N923SW), IATA flight (EK184), or ICAO callsign (BAW123).
• Tap FIND. The app asks you to confirm before spending a credit, and tells you how many you have left.
• If several aircraft match, you get a list headed n FLIGHTS FOUND — pick yours, or tap CLEAR to start again.
• The tracking view opens. Leave it, and it stays: reopening restores what you were watching.

If nothing matches, the app says so plainly: "No flights found for [query]. Check the identifier and try again."

11.3.1 Coming back later

Reopen Flight Watch and your aircraft is still there, with a banner reading Restored from saved pin — tap refresh for live data. The figures you're seeing are extrapolated from the last snapshot — SYNC when you want the real thing.

11.4 Credits & the calculated estimate

What costs, and what's free

You get 10 credits a month. A bar reads Credits: 1 / 10 used this month, and the SYNC button carries the remainder — SYNC • 9 left. When the budget is gone the bar reads No credits left — resets on the 1st of next month and the SYNC button disappears.

11.4.1 The CALCULATED ESTIMATE banner

This is the most important design decision on the screen. Between syncs, the app keeps the progress bar and ETA moving by advancing the last snapshot with elapsed time — dead reckoning, once a minute, at no cost.

And it tells you it's doing exactly that. The banner reads CALCULATED ESTIMATE, with Snapshot 7s ago — advancing by time underneath.

The credit budget resets on the 1st of each month.

11.5 Notifications

Progress on your lock screen

Flight Watch is the only feature in the app that can send you a notification. Nothing else — not weather, not NOTAMs, not advisories — will ever interrupt you.

11.5.1 Two behaviours, by platform

Platform	What you get
Android	A persistent notification with live progress: the flight and percentage in the title, the route and remaining time in the body, refreshed every minute. Silent and unobtrusive — it sits there and updates.
iOS	Banner alerts on status changes — departed, landed. The first time you pin a flight, an explanation appears: Flight Watch on iOS, noting that iOS does not support persistent live-progress notifications for third-party apps, and telling you where to enable notifications if the alerts don't appear.

On both platforms an arrival alert fires when the aircraft lands: [FLIGHT] ARRIVED — "Your aircraft has arrived or will arrive soon." It clears itself after a few minutes.

• Off by default. Turn the Push Notifications switch on to start.
• It stops when the flight lands — the switch is disabled at that point, and the ongoing notification is cleared.
• Stop tracking any time with the red button beside the flight identity.
• Notifications cost nothing. Everything they show comes from the local estimate.

11.6 Reading the cards

What each block tells you

11.7 Safety

What this is not

Flight Watch shows commercially available flight-tracking data, delayed and incomplete by nature, extrapolated between updates. It is a convenience — the answer to "roughly when will they be down?" — and nothing more.

• Not for navigation, and not for separation. This is a consumer tracking feed. It has no role whatsoever in any operational or tactical decision.
• Coverage is not universal. Tracking depends on the aircraft transmitting and on receiver coverage. Oceanic and remote sectors have gaps, and an aircraft that vanishes from the display has not vanished from the sky.
• Extrapolation knows nothing. The advancing estimate assumes the aircraft continues as it was. It has no knowledge of holding, rerouting, diversion or a missed approach.
• Schedules are schedules. Times come from the operator's filing, not from a control authority.
• Read the snapshot age before you rely on any figure on this screen.

Built for pilots. By a pilot. Next in the series: the Pilot toolkit — ten calculators and decoders.

12.1 The shared colour language

Learn it once, read all ten

The toolkit borrows a convention from the flight deck: colour tells you where a number came from, and whether it constrains you. Once you have it, you can read any of the ten calculators without instructions.

Plain white on a neutral field means raw input — a number you typed that carries no special status.

12.2 The ten tools

What each one is for

12.3 Limitation of the Day

The daily weight analysis

The calculation every line pilot runs before the load sheet arrives: build the operating weight, enter the limits, and read what the day allows.

12.3.1 The five sections

• Operating Weight Chain — Basic Weight, Crew, Pantry add up to Dry Operating Weight; add Take-off Fuel and you get Operating Weight.
• Structural Limit Inputs — MZFW, MTOW, MLW and Trip Fuel. Profile-sourced values arrive in magenta; the footnote says so: "Magenta = auto-populated from profile."
• Performance Limit Inputs — MTOW PERF, the performance-limited take-off weight from your charts.
• Limit Comparison — four columns: (a) MZFW+TOF, (b) MTOW struc, (c) MLW+TRIP, (d) MTOW perf. The lowest is drawn in red, with the note "↑ lowest value highlighted in red". A column with no input shows a dash.
• Results — Max Allowed Weight For Take-Off in red, Operating Weight plain, Allowed Traffic Load in green.

12.3.2 The four-state DOW field

This one field is the clearest expression of the colour convention, and it explains itself on screen: "DOW: magenta = profile · blue = manual · green = computed."

The states are mutually exclusive and the app keeps them honest: type in the chain and any manual DOW is cleared; type in DOW and the chain is cleared. The ✕ re-imports the profile value, or clears the field if there isn't one.

12.4 Fuel Uplift & Tankering

Two fuel questions, two tools

12.4.1 Fuel Uplift — the refuelling cross-check

Start by choosing your unit combination: KG / LTR, KG / USG, LBS / USG or LBS / LTR. Each carries a sensible default density, and a tile holding earlier work is badged SAVED DATA.

Then the chain, in two sections — MASS CALCULATIONS and VOLUME & VERIFICATION — each field tagged so the arithmetic is visible:

Compare (F) against the metered figure (E) and the app gives you the discrepancy twice: in volume (G = E − F) and in mass (H = G × D), each signed and each labelled with its own unit.

12.4.2 Tankering — how much can you carry?

Two sections. A — MAXIMUM PERMISSIBLE TOW works from Maximum Landing Weight and Trip Fuel to the max permissible TOW (red — the limit), then subtracts Actual Zero Fuel Weight to give the max fuel you can carry (green — usable). B — REQUIRED FUEL FOR TANKERING adds block fuel sector 2, trip fuel sector 1 and taxi.

The formulas are printed on screen under TANKERING FORMULAS, with the reference line "All masses in kg | Ref: Operator fuel policy."

Both tools remember their state; both offer Save to Notes.

12.5 ACN / PCN

Will the pavement take you?

12.5.1 Three cards in

• AIRFIELD — the published PCN.
• AIRCRAFT — ACN DATA — your ACN at minimum and at maximum weight, both from the AFM or FCOM pavement tables.
• AIRCRAFT — WEIGHTS — the corresponding minimum (OEW) and maximum (MTOW/MRW) weights.

12.5.1.1 One verdict out

FULL WEIGHT AUTHORIZED

PCN exceeds your ACN at max weight. A PCN margin figure is shown.

WEIGHT RESTRICTED

An interpolated maximum allowable mass, with the Interpolation ratio and the Required offload.

OPERATION NOT PERMITTED

The pavement cannot take the aircraft even at minimum weight.

The method is printed on screen as a typeset formula under FORMULA · ICAO DOC 9157 — linear interpolation between the two ACN/weight pairs. Until every field is filled the result card reads Fill all fields above to compute M_adm.

One difference worth knowing: this is the only calculator that genuinely converts between kg and lbs. The others relabel the unit and leave your numbers untouched.

12.6 Cold Temp Correction & Wind Component

Two tools with real consequences

12.6.1 Cold Temperature Altitude Correction

Subtitled with its own method — ICAO Doc 8168 Vol I, Table 2-4-1 b. Enter OAT (°C) and Airport Elevation (ft), then the published altitudes for five fixes in order: IAF, IF, FAF, Minima (DA/MDA), Go-Around.

Each row returns the corrected altitude in green with the delta in amber underneath. The APPROACH PROFILE panel draws the descent, so a mistyped altitude shows up as a kink.

12.6.1.1 What the status bar tells you

12.6.2 Wind Component

Standard trigonometry, printed on screen: HW = V cos(θ) XW = V sin(θ). Gust components appear as a second pair whenever the gust exceeds the steady speed.

12.6.2.1 The warnings are graded

• Headwind renders green, tailwind coral.
• Crosswind is neutral below 15 kt, amber at 15–24 kt ("— moderate"), coral at 25 kt and above with "⚠ Check AFM XW limit".
• Tailwind above 10 kt adds "⚠ Check AFM tailwind limit".
• The status bar restates the whole picture in METAR shorthand — e.g. 210°/15G25KT on RWY 25 — components computed.

12.7 Timing & Unit Converter

Two small tools you'll use constantly

12.7.1 Timing Calculator

Add and subtract times without mental arithmetic. Toggle between + and −, type HH and MM (the field advances by itself after two digits) and tap ADD — or use a preset chip: 0:15 · 0:30 · 0:45 · 1:00 · 1:30 · 2:00 · 4:00 · 8:00 · 14:00.

The tape lists every entry; the result shows TOTAL in large HH:MM with the decimal hours underneath — ready for the tech log. A negative total renders coral, a positive one green.

Nothing is saved: leaving the screen clears the tape. Its footer reads simply "Reference tool only."

12.7.1.1 Aviation Converter

Twelve conversions in a grid — pick one (it turns blue), type a value, read the result in green:

Mass	Volume	Pressure	Distance
Lbs to Kg Kg to Lbs	Gal to Liters Liters to Gal	hPa to inHg inHg to hPa	Meters to Feet Feet to Meters SM to Meters Meters to SM SM to NM NM to SM

The factors are printed under CONVERSION FACTORS, with the reference line "1 NM = 1852 m (exact) | Ref: ICAO Annex 5 / NIST."

12.8 SNOWTAM Decoder

Winter operations, decoded

12.8.1 Reading the output

The decoded view is assembled in a fixed order: a severity banner, the summary, one card per runway with three columns (Touchdown Zone, Mid-point, Stop-end), the SITUATIONAL AWARENESS list, and finally RAW MESSAGE, collapsed but always there.

12.8.1.1 The RWYCC colours