RouteMapper is a professional aviation route mapping and visualization tool built for the aviation industry. It lets you plot airline route networks on an interactive map, calculate great circle distances, animate routes, draw range circles and analyze airport connectivity.
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LHR-JFKEnter one route per line. Routes can be simple pairs or multi-stop sequences:
Use the Map Options panel to change the basemap theme, route colors, line width, endpoint markers, and label styles. Toggle route borders, adjust arc height, and switch between Mercator and globe projection. The Advanced Options panel gives to additional animation and overlay effects.
The Analytics tab turns RouteMapper into a route opportunity scanner. Set an origin airport, define what aircraft you're modelling, and the tool returns a ranked table of every airport within your reach — enriched with catchment population.
LHR) or by clicking Set on map and choosing an airport.Each row is a destination airport within your envelope. Columns include:
Set min range = a competing aircraft's range, max range = the new aircraft's range. Filter by min destination catchment to focus on markets that justify a non-stop. The results are the incremental destinations the new aircraft unlocks from your hub.
Set your airport as the origin and use min destination catchment of, say, 500,000 to filter out unrealistic markets. The result is a ranked list of cities you can pitch to airlines, with the catchment data they'll want to see.
Set min range = 5,000 km and max range = 9,500 km from your hub. Combine with the OD40 Traffic Flows tab to overlay actual demand on the candidate destinations.
Set max destination catchment to 2 million to filter out the obvious mega-markets and focus on under-served secondary cities.
The Traffic Flows tab is built on the U.S. Department of Transportation's DB1C origin-destination ticket sample — a 40 % sample of every itinerary touching the U.S., grossed up to full market size. Unlike schedule data (capacity), this is actual demand: how many passengers really flew between a city pair, what they paid, and how they routed. RouteMapper hosts the dataset back to 2018 and refreshes it as each new quarter is released by the DOT.
ALL as a wildcard where the mode allows).ALL as a wildcard to leave one side open (mode-dependent). For via-airport queries, the via field is required and from/to can be wildcards.
The results card has four key components:
Every distinct routing in the result set, with passenger count, fare, yield, and the airports along the path. Sort by any column. Click any itinerary to plot the routing on the map.
For outbound and via queries, shows the true endpoints of passenger journeys — not just the next leg. The right way to measure where demand from a hub actually goes, regardless of how many connections it takes.
The biggest passenger flows in the dataset that aren't currently served non-stop. The route development team's prospect list, ranked by realized demand.
Visualizes how passengers flow across each stage of multi-leg itineraries. Each band's thickness is proportional to passenger volume; the chart caps at the top 15 flows with the remainder bucketed into a grey "Other" node so the structure stays readable. Hover any link for fare, yield, and passenger count.
Run a via-airport query on your hub the Final destinations tab shows where connecting passengers actually go — telling you which beyond-flights to protect when scheduling banks.
Run a point-to-point query for a market you serve and see how much of the demand they're carrying and at what fare — the basis for any capture analysis.
Outbound mode from your airport, looking at Top non-served. The output is the ranked airline pitch list with passenger demand attached.
Pick a market and run month-over-month. The KPI deltas — particularly yield — show how new entrants and capacity additions are reshaping market economics over time.
Use the via mode with your hub set as via and an underserved destination as the to field. You see every behind-market feeding that destination via your hub — the geographic spread of demand that would be at risk if the service was cut.
Combine the Network Diff feature (compares two schedule snapshots) with Traffic Flows to weight every change by realized demand. Dropped routes with high OD40 traffic are the meaningful story; dropped routes with thin demand are noise.
The traffic flows module uses the U.S. Department of Transportation's Origin & Destination Survey (DB1C), published quarterly via the Bureau of Transportation Statistics. DB1C is a 40% sample of all domestic airline coupons sold in the United States, grossed up by a factor of 2.5 to estimate total passenger volumes.
The dataset captures the full itinerary of each ticket — not just individual flight segments — enabling true origin-and-destination analysis. For a passenger flying Boston → Atlanta → Miami, the survey records both the direct leg (ATL–MIA) and the complete itinerary (BOS–ATL–MIA), making it possible to analyze connecting traffic, hub flows, and behind-and-beyond demand.
Key characteristics and caveats:
Source: Bureau of Transportation Statistics, U.S. Department of Transportation. transtats.bts.gov
Aircraft range polygons use a physics-based flight profile simulation combined with 20 years of global wind data from the ECMWF ERA5 reanalysis, accessed via the Copernicus Climate Data Store.
Wind data specification:
Aircraft performance profiles are sourced from the Eurocontrol ATC Performance Database. Each aircraft variant includes climb rates, cruise Mach/TAS, descent profiles, and V-speeds. The range engine simulates a full flight profile (takeoff → climb stages → cruise → descent → approach) with wind applied at the appropriate pressure level for each phase using the triangle of velocities method for proper crosswind handling.
Key assumptions and limitations:
Sources: Copernicus Climate Change Service, ECMWF. cds.climate.copernicus.eu · Eurocontrol ATC Performance Database.
Visualize proposed route networks, compare seasonal schedules, and evaluate new market opportunities. Import OAG or schedule data via CSV to map your entire network. Use network diff to track competitor changes season-over-season.
Build route maps for airline pitches. Show catchment area population, wind-adjusted aircraft range for target fleet types, and OD40 traffic data to demonstrate behind-and-beyond demand feeding your airport.
Create presentation-ready route maps for client deliverables. Layer traffic flows, range analysis, and network diff insights into a single visual. Export maps, data tables, and animation recordings for reports and pitch decks.
Model how aircraft range varies by season and wind conditions. Compare narrowbody vs widebody range envelopes from a hub. Overlay OD40 demand data to identify city pairs within range but currently unserved non-stop.
Use the OD40 via/hub query to see which passenger flows connect through a given airport. Identify the strongest behind-and-beyond itineraries feeding a hub, and quantify the traffic at risk if a connecting bank is cut.
Analyze fare levels and yields across U.S. domestic markets. Compare point-to-point vs connecting traffic shares. Track how new entrant carriers are reshaping market economics using historical OD40 data.
RouteMapper accepts IATA codes (e.g. LHR, JFK, NRT), ICAO codes (e.g. EGLL, KJFK, RJTT), and latitude/longitude coordinates. The database covers thousands of airports, airfields, and heliports worldwide.
Distances are calculated using the Vincenty formula on the WGS84 ellipsoid, which gives sub-meter accuracy for geodesic distances. Results are shown in kilometers, nautical miles, or statute miles.
Yes. RouteMapper is free for personal, educational, and commercial use. If you embed or redistribute the tool, you must include attribution to RouteMapper.com. See the Terms of Use for details.
No account is required for mapping routes. Sign in (free) to save and load map configurations across sessions.
RouteMapper works in all modern browsers with WebGL2 support, including Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Edge. A desktop browser is recommended for the best experience, though mobile browsers are supported.
You can share your map via URL (the current state is encoded in the link). Route animations can be recorded and downloaded as video. Full image export is on the roadmap.
The airport database is static and updated periodically. RouteMapper does not display real-time flight tracking data by default, though a live flights overlay is available as an experimental feature. The tool is designed for route planning and visualization, not real-time operations.
The U.S. DOT Origin & Destination Survey (DB1C) is a 40% sample of all domestic airline coupons sold in the United States. RouteMapper processes this data to show estimated passenger volumes, average fares, yields, and full itinerary paths between U.S. airport pairs. The higher sample rate (compared to the 10% DB1B product) provides better coverage of thinner markets and reduces sampling variance. Data is published quarterly with a roughly 6-month lag.
The aircraft range engine simulates a full flight profile (takeoff through climb stages, cruise, descent, and approach) using performance data from the Eurocontrol ATC Performance Database. Wind is applied at each phase using the correct pressure level from a 20-year ERA5 climatology dataset. The triangle of velocities method correctly handles both headwinds/tailwinds and crosswind components. The result is a range polygon showing how far an aircraft type can fly in each direction from a given airport, accounting for prevailing winds by month or annually.
Network diff compares two airline schedule snapshots and highlights new routes, dropped routes, frequency changes, and fleet swaps. Upload two CSV schedule files (e.g. winter vs summer, or this year vs last year) and the tool colour-codes changes on the map. This is useful for tracking competitor network evolution, identifying seasonal patterns, and briefing stakeholders on market changes.
RouteMapper offers several data overlays: population density (GHS 2025), built-up volume, rail networks (OpenRailwayMap), oil and gas pipelines (OpenInfraMap), airspace boundaries and navaids (OpenAIP), timezones, satellite imagery, and live aircraft positions (ADS-B). Each can be toggled independently from the Map Options panel.