Route planning that talks airspace, a sharper ridge layer and a carb icing check for every leg. Mind the rotor.

This release takes the development branch to production, and brings together the 5 and 7 October rollouts. It builds on the 4 October release: everything described there is still live, and the work below comes on top.

🗺️ Route planning that understands airspace

The airspace answers introduced on 4 October now come to the map. The planner draws its decisions on the route, and adds a route card, an airspace sheet and a waypoint search.

• Rules a pilot would apply: MATZs are planned through, with a call. An ATZ or CTR is treated as reaching the surface. Class A and your safety floor are respected. NOTAM activity is checked at your planned time, and the call prompts give the frequency next to the unit (F1524).
• Activated airspace: restriction zones that are only active when notified are planned as NOTAM-activated, not as permanent walls (F1457, F1524). The planner also reports the clearance it actually achieves, and says plainly when it has had to give up a standoff (F1584).
• The map shows the plan: the planned route is always magenta. It is amber and dashed where you need permission to complete it, and red and dotted where it cannot be flown at the planned time. Router turn points appear as dots on the line. A marker sits at each airspace your route meets, and one tap opens a callout with Go round, Fly over, Fly under and I’m approved. Markers that would overlap merge into one with a count, and only NOTAMs that stop or restrict your flight are drawn (F1528).
• Route card: a new card shows your From, To and stops in order, like a train timetable, with the airspace between them. It folds to one line when you need the map, and you can still drag, reorder and delete stops (F1529).
• Airspace sheet: the airspace button on the rail opens three lists: your decisions, the airspace along your route in order with distances, and the permissions to get before you fly (F1530).
• Find a waypoint by name: type “compton vor”, or use phonetics such as “whiskey”. Results are ranked by distance from your route, and reporting points for your destination come first. You pick From, then To, then waypoints, and the route is calculated once when you tap Done. A centre crosshair places a point by eye (F1549).

⏱️ Route planning, faster

• Only what changed: after an edit, the planner works out again only the legs that changed (F1574).
• Remembered between sessions: solved legs are kept on your phone, so reopening a plan does not start from scratch (F1575).
• In parallel: legs that do need solving are worked out side by side on your phone, and a first route solve takes about a sixth of the time it did (F1576, F1524).

❄️ Carburettor icing on every leg

Add your aircraft’s induction type (carburettor, injection or none). The walk-out card and trip legs will then show the carb icing risk for each leg, at cruise and on the descent. The risk is worked out from forecast temperature and humidity, read against the standard carb icing chart. We add a 1.5 °C margin so the advice errs on the side of caution (F1544).

🏔️ Ridge lift: lift, sink and rotor told apart

• Warnings where the terrain causes them: a lee warning appears only where a crest at least 100 m (about 330 ft) higher stands upwind, close enough to matter. A too-strong warning appears only on slopes of 12 degrees or more. Both are drawn as outlines, so the lift band and the map stay readable (F1569).
• Sink and rotor: expected sink shows as a blue fill. Lee rotor has its own red dashed outline, because it can pull you into the hill. Each comes in a light and a dark shade, judged against your wing’s limits. An info sheet, a legend under the map chips and a tap on any cell explain what you are looking at (F1583).
• Checked against simulation: we tested the lee rule against high-resolution airflow simulations and tuned it to match. Estimates from terrain alone are now tempered to fit those simulations, while sink warnings stay at full strength (F1572, F1624).
• Ridge lift packs: on plans that include ridge soaring, the layer can use precomputed ridge lift packs. Packs are downloaded for where you are, your home site, your favourites and your route, and they work offline. Where a pack covers your area, its figures take precedence over the terrain estimate (F1546).
• Quick start: the ridge estimate now comes up promptly after a cold launch (F1489).

✈️ Modern Fly, built around the map

Pilots on paid plans can choose the modern Fly layout. Classic remains the default (F1103, F1526).

• Map first: clear, compact panels take up less of the screen. A Menu button opens the Flight menu, with your pages, layer switches and End flight, and ending a flight always asks you to confirm. The tab bar steps aside whilst you fly (F1531, F1532).
• Cleaner layout: one status pill, GPS first. The compass tape sits above altitude, groundspeed and vertical speed. LAND and MAYDAY share one button at the top right. Map credits take a single small line (F1531, F1532).
• Map controls: buttons on the right switch between north up and heading up, snap the map back to your aircraft, and zoom. A slim strip shows the terrain (F1531).
• Screens for your aircraft: each aircraft class has its own standard in-flight screens. You can switch between them with large previous and next buttons, and Back to Standard always takes you home. An optional rule switches to the vario screen when you are circling, off by default. You can set up your own screens on the ground, in Settings > Maps (F1527).

📍 More places to land and navigate by

Around a thousand more UK strips and landing sites, such as Enstone and Fishburn, now appear on the map, along with sites from other countries. You can pick them as route waypoints, but they are never offered as glide or MAYDAY fields. Our community sources also add frequencies and navaids. Where official data exists, it still takes precedence (F1459, F845).

🛩️ Traffic and the map

• Glider traffic: our glider traffic source is now prepared separately for each map area, and positions older than five minutes are no longer shown as live (F1596, F1614).
• Smart layers on more maps: Smart layers now work on the planning, trace and NOTAM maps. On the planning map, they measure from your planned level. Airspace near your track gets a strong outline, and traffic outside your band is faded rather than hidden (F1516, F1517, F1520).
• Power lines: dense community-mapped power lines are simplified. Substations now show as a single outline. The wire alert margin around community-mapped lines grows from 25 to 30 m to cover the simplification (F1542, F1317).

🧭 Getting around the app

• Dashboard: Fly Now opens the Fly screen, and tapping your Next Up plan opens it in Plan (F1541).
• Search without a position: with no GPS fix, aerodrome and place search lists UK results first (F1536).
• Plans: an unsaved plan can be named, and Walk-out offers to save it first. The aircraft choice on Plans clearly shows it is needed (F1477, F1513).
• Share a route: where your plan includes route sharing, the planner’s share icon opens a share sheet with a QR code that works offline (F1502).
• Smaller touches: each NOTAM has its own card, and Return warns you before planning without a GPS fix (F610, F1501).

🛠️ Under the hood: steadier and more resilient

• Server memory: every request that could read an unlimited amount of data now streams it, caps it or refuses it. Each fix comes with a test that holds memory use under a ceiling, so the service stays steady under load (F1577, F1595).
• Background services: they now run on a lighter runtime and start one after another, and weather data is streamed in rather than held in memory all at once. That leaves more headroom with every service running (F1568).
• A standby site: a live copy of the platform is kept up to date at a second site, with its own monitoring and a full recovery runbook. Scheduled backups are checked for integrity (F1543, F1578, F107, F765, F117).
• On your phone: map data is read in bounded amounts and processed away from the screen’s main thread. Background calculations hand work between threads more safely, for a smoother and steadier app (F739, F1316, F916, F1532).
• Aircraft performance: every aircraft type’s performance record now loads, and foot-launched aircraft have their own category. Glider speed markings appear only where a published source backs them (F985).

🔒 Security

• Dependencies: we’ve applied security updates across our dependencies as part of our continuing work to keep the platform current (F1627).

🔭 Coming next

• Ridge lift packs across the UK first, then further afield (F1547).
• An estimated outside air temperature and carb icing advice in flight (F1545).
• A redesigned Flight menu, with map preferences saved for each in-flight screen (F1537, F1527).
• A styled card of your flight to share on social media (F1534).