VFR-descent planner

Advisory route planning

Suggest a route that keeps a VFR-reporting airport within range at every point — ETOPS planning with a live-weather suitability predicate.

This tool suggests a route and shows margins. It never asserts that the weather will hold or that the route is authoritative. Stale or missing weather makes an airport unusable (fail-safe). Advisory / planning use only — not for navigation.

Plan a VFR-descent route

Range defaults to a 40 nm distance disk. Time-at-speed (range_min + speed_kt) and glide (glide_ratio + altitude_ft) modes are available as query parameters — see /v1/plan. Plans are capped at 600 nm great-circle — farther than that, use the trip planner.

No fully-covered route exists under the HARD constraint. Reason: disconnected. The origin reaches 241 node(s) over covered edges; the destination is reachable if coverage is ignored (a weather wall, not a missing connection).

Showing the SOFT minimal-exposure route below — the out-of-coverage segments are highlighted in red and quantified in the diversion table.

Local equirectangular projection, north up. Green fills are range rings (radius R) around suitable, VFR-reporting airports — their union is the covered region. 49 suitable airports in the region. Red segments are out of coverage. Coverage is tested by sampling the great circle every sampleSpacingNm; a covered verdict is exact only to ±sampleSpacingNm/2. An uncovered sliver narrower than the spacing can be missed. Advisory, not a defended claim.

Route · 16 legs · 405.4 nm · 34.7 nm exposed

#	From	To	Via	Dist (nm)	Coverage
1	KRCX	WATOG	join	28.3 nm	covered
2	WATOG	ZOVNA	corridor	52.6 nm	covered
3	ZOVNA	YEPSU	corridor	49.2 nm	covered
4	YEPSU	WATAM	corridor	52.3 nm	covered
5	WATAM	YILUV	corridor	48.0 nm	covered
6	YILUV	WAGNI	V510	15.0 nm	covered
7	WAGNI	FAR	V510	10.0 nm	covered
8	FAR	HONET	V2	10.0 nm	covered
9	HONET	CHAFE	V2	12.4 nm	covered
10	CHAFE	DUXHO	V2	38.5 nm	covered
11	DUXHO	HUHJO	V2	2.0 nm	covered
12	HUHJO	JMS	V2	13.0 nm	covered
13	JMS	HOLKS	V2	12.0 nm	covered
14	HOLKS	CAXOL	V2	1.0 nm	exposed 1.0 nm
15	CAXOL	TAPNN	V2	29.4 nm	exposed 29.4 nm
16	TAPNN	6H8	join	31.9 nm	exposed 4.4 nm

Great-circle A→B is 390.7 nm; the planned route is 405.4 nm.

Diversion table (ETOPS-style)

Leg	Nearest suitable	Bearing (°)	Dist (nm)	Best cover	Margin (nm)
KRCX→WATOG	KRCX	104°	0.0 nm	KRCX	11.7 nm
WATOG→ZOVNA	KRZN	288°	0.8 nm	KRZN	7.3 nm
ZOVNA→YEPSU	KJMR	160°	9.6 nm	KJMR	6.9 nm
YEPSU→WATAM	KSAZ	290°	1.0 nm	KSAZ	2.3 nm
WATAM→YILUV	KSAZ	102°	14.6 nm	KBWP	▼ -21.4 nm
YILUV→WAGNI	KJKJ	322°	8.8 nm	KJKJ	19.1 nm
WAGNI→FAR	KJKJ	024°	7.5 nm	KJKJ	30.7 nm
FAR→HONET	KJKJ	071°	9.3 nm	KFAR	25.8 nm
HONET→CHAFE	KFAR	066°	14.2 nm	KFAR	15.5 nm
CHAFE→DUXHO	KBAC	307°	4.1 nm	KBAC	13.0 nm
DUXHO→HUHJO	KBAC	080°	12.5 nm	KBAC	25.6 nm
HUHJO→JMS	KBAC	086°	14.4 nm	KBAC	12.9 nm
JMS→HOLKS	KBAC	088°	27.1 nm	KBAC	1.0 nm
HOLKS→CAXOL	KBAC	087°	39.0 nm	KBAC	▼ -0.0 nm
CAXOL→TAPNN	KBAC	086°	40.0 nm	KBAC	▼ -29.4 nm
TAPNN→6H8	KBIS	282°	26.4 nm	KBIS	▼ -3.1 nm

Per leg: the nearest suitable airport (bearing from the leg midpoint) and the single airport that best blankets the leg, with margin = R − its worst-point distance. A negative margin (▼) means no single airport covers the whole leg — the union still may; this is a per-airport lower bound, not an over-claim.

Snapshot & configuration

Nav cycle: 2610
Artifact: 7005c1401bd4
METAR reports used: 86 of 511
Oldest observation: 2026-10-15T01:50:00.000Z
Range R: 40 nm → 40.0 nm
Weather minimum: VFR only · 75 min max age
Routing: mixed · corridor 30 nm
Constraint: hard
Min runway: 3000 ft
Coverage test: ±0.75 nm

This plan is reproducible from the values above: the same nav cycle, artifact, METAR observation times, and config yield the same route. Coverage is tested by sampling; a “covered” verdict is exact only to the tolerance shown. Weather is an ephemeral overlay — never merged into the navigation data.

Advisory / planning only · AIRAC cycle 2610 · not a certified navigation source.