The airport reference answers the small questions that come up around a flight - which runway is favoured in this wind, what the tower frequency is, when the sun sets at the destination - from a bundled database that works offline. There is no Airports tab: the reference comes to you where you need it - the Aviation Map's airport peek, Home's nearby airports shortcut, the station workbench's Airport tab - and the search page behind them all reaches every field in the database.

Find an airport

The Airports page opens on a search field and the shortcuts that grow as you use the module: your groups, the country browser, favourites and recently viewed fields.

The Airports page: a search field with placeholder ICAO, IATA, city or name, a Saved and collections card reading 1 collection, 3 airports total, a Browse by country card, a Favourites section with EGLL London 83 ft and EHAM Amsterdam -11 ft rows each carrying a gold star, and a Recently viewed strip with EGLL and EHAM pills — The Airports page: search on top, and your groups, favourites and recent fields below it.

Search matches ICAO, IATA, city or name - "EGLL", "LHR" and "Heathrow" all find the same airport, and results appear as you type, entirely from the on-device database. Fields you have starred sort to the top.

The airport search with AMSTERDAM typed: result rows for EHAM Amsterdam -11 ft carrying a filled gold star, EHHA Amsterdam 1 ft, FAAM Amsterdam South Africa 4,310 ft and SYNA New Amsterdam Guyana 3 ft, each with an outline star, above the keyboard — Search by name, city or code - starred fields lead the results.

Read the reference page

An airport's page is one scroll through everything the database holds on the field, card by card.

The EGLL reference page top: the identity card with EGLL and LHR codes, a Scheduled service pill, a filled favourite star, London Heathrow Airport, London GB Large airport, elevation 83 ft and 25 m, coordinates 51.4707 N 0.4599 W, then the Timezone card with local time 10:07, zone Europe/London, UTC offset +01:00 and DST active Yes — Identity first: codes, elevation in both units, coordinates - then the field's own clock.

Identity - ICAO and IATA, scheduled-service status, type, elevation in feet and metres, coordinates. The star here is how a field joins your favourites.
Timezone - the field's local time right now, its IANA zone, UTC offset and whether DST is active.
Sun - sunrise, sunset, day length, solar noon and all three twilight bands, local and Zulu, for any date you pick. The card names its method: "Source: NOAA solar-position algorithm · Computed".

The EGLL Sun card: sunrise 06:03 local 05:03Z, sunset 20:04 local 19:04Z, day length 14h 01m, solar noon 13:04, a twilight table with civil, nautical and astronomical dawn and dusk times, and the line Source: NOAA solar-position algorithm, Computed - above the Runways card with the 09L/27R schematic strip, 12,802 ft and 3,902 m — Sun times for any date, twilight included - with the computation's source named.

The Runways card draws each physical runway as a schematic strip - identifiers, length in both units, width, surface, and any displaced threshold hatched and called out. The card states its limits in writing: "Schematic - not to scale, not for navigation."

The runways card for EGLL: the 09L end detail with 090 T heading, ASP surface, 164 ft 50 m wide chips and an amber 09L displaced 1,007 ft 307 m note, the full 09R/27L strip at 12,008 ft 3,660 m with its own displaced threshold note, the line Schematic - not to scale, not for navigation, and the top of the Crosswind by runway card with a wind rose reading 100 degrees 7 knots — Each runway as a schematic strip - displaced thresholds flagged, limits stated.

Crosswind and low sun, from the live METAR

With a current METAR available, the page decomposes the reported wind onto every runway end: headwind or tailwind and crosswind per end, with the most-headwind end badged FAVOURED. The card's own footnote is the honest part worth reading: "METAR wind is true; runway numbers are magnetic and may differ from tower/ATIS. 'Favoured' = most headwind, not a recommendation. Reference only - verify on charts/ATIS." The METAR itself is attributed with its source and age, and if there is no current METAR the card says so instead of computing from stale air.

The crosswind by runway card for EGLL: a wind rose with the 09L/R and 27L/R runway axis and a wind arrow, then a table with rows for 09L and 09R reading headwind 7 crosswind 1 right with Favoured most headwind badges, and 27L and 27R reading tailwind 7 crosswind 1 left, above the footnote that METAR wind is true, runway numbers are magnetic, and favoured is not a recommendation — The live wind broken onto every runway end - favoured means most headwind, nothing more.

The low-sun glare card answers a narrower question: does a low sun line up with a runway heading right now, and when is the next alignment? It draws the runways from above with the sun's position, names the next alignment window, and frames itself plainly: an informational cue only - there is no official glare standard; verify visually.

The low-sun glare card for EGLL with a No glare badge: evaluated now, a top-down dial of the runways with the sun southeast at 123 degrees true and 36 degrees above the horizon, and a note that the sun is 36 degrees up with no low-sun glare on any runway now, the next low-sun alignment on RWY 27R and 27L around 17:54 to 18:58Z marked by a dashed wedge on the dial — The glare check: where the low sun will sit, and on which runway - an informational cue, nothing more.

Frequencies

Radio frequencies come grouped - tower, ground, approach and departure, ATIS, delivery, emergency - with the card's standing line beneath: "Reference only - verify on current charts." Directly under the card sits the attribution block for everything above it: the source, the fetch time, and which values were gap-filled from the bundled data.

Keep notes on a field

The Notes card holds your own memory of the airport - taxi quirks, crew shuttles, parking. Notes are deliberately local: the editor says it in one line, "Private to this device - never synced or shared."

The foot of the EGLL reference page: the Notes card with a No notes yet empty state inviting taxi quirks, crew shuttles and parking, an Add a note button, then the shortcut rows - METAR/TAF for EGLL, Winds aloft, 30-day METAR history and Distance from here, each with a caption — Notes and the hand-offs: one tap to the field's weather, winds, history or distances.

The New note EGLL editor sheet over the reference page: a text field with Long taxi to 27L - crew shuttle leaves from Gate B typed, the line Private to this device - never synced or shared, Cancel and Save buttons, and the keyboard — The note editor - and its privacy line, which means exactly what it says.

The shortcut rows at the foot of the page hand off to the rest of the app: the field's METAR/TAF, winds aloft, its 30-day METAR history and the distance tool pre-filled with this field - the Weather chapter covers what those screens hold and which sit in Pro.

Nearby airports

Nearby airports (from Home's weather cards, or the navigate icon on the Airports page) takes one GPS fix and maps the medium and large fields around you, with a distance-ranked list beneath and a 25, 50 or 100 NM radius switch. In sparse regions it offers a wider 200 NM search rather than pretending an empty list means empty sky; smaller fields and heliports are not shown, and the screen says so. The footer carries the module's data line: "Airport data: bundled OurAirports dataset · Informational only - not for navigation."

Tapping a field opens a preview with its runways and frequencies, a path into the full reference page, and two practical actions: add it to your Brief, or set it as your home base.

Browse by country

Browse by country is the no-search path through the database: every country with its airport count, filterable by type - Large, Medium, Small, Heliports, Seaplane - and drillable to the country's full list.

The Browse page, airports by country: type filter chips All, Large, Medium, Small, Heliports and Seaplane with All selected, a Filter countries search field, and country rows for Brazil 2,864 airports, United States 2,467, Australia 1,940, Chile 497, Germany 479 and Russia 465 — The whole database by country - filter by type, drill into any country.

Favourites and groups

The star on a reference page saves the field; Saved (from the Airports page's "Saved & collections" card) lists your starred airports and your groups - named sets of fields you check together: home base and diverts, EU hubs, a training circuit.

The Saved page, groups and favourites: a Groups section with an EU hubs card reading 3 airports and EGLL, EHAM and LFPG chips, a Saved airports section with starred EGLL London 83 ft and EHAM Amsterdam -11 ft rows, and a plus button bottom right for a new group — Groups and starred fields in one place - the plus button starts a new group.

A group's page shows each member with its live METAR, raw and verbatim, with a flight-rules badge and age pill - the same honest anatomy as the weather watch-list. Load into Brief turns the group into a briefing in one tap: it replaces the current Brief selection with the group's members in order. A Brief holds up to 8 airports, and a larger group warns before anything is dropped.

The EU hubs group page, 3 airports: member cards for EGLL, EHAM and LFPG, each with a VMC badge, an age pill of a few minutes and its raw METAR verbatim - for example METAR EGLL 260850Z AUTO 10007KT 070V130 9999 NCD 22/17 Q1013 - above Load into Brief and Add airport buttons — A group carries its members' live raw METARs - and loads into Brief in one tap.

Adding members takes one entry - the field accepts several codes at once, auto-hyphenating as you type ("EGLL-EHAM-LFPG"), and rejects the whole batch with a named culprit rather than silently dropping an unreadable code. There is no cap on groups and no gate anywhere in the module - the airport reference is part of the free tier.

In the station workbench

Every station on your weather watch-list carries this same reference as its Airport tab - the first position on the workbench's segment strip, one swipe away from the station's METAR, TAF and NOTAMs. Same cards, same attributions; its nearby-fields rows open each field's station view, so you stay in the weather context you came from.

The EGLL station workbench on its Airport tab: the segment strip with Airport selected ahead of Summary, METAR and TAF, then the same reference cards - the EGLL identity card with scheduled service pill and favourite star, the timezone card with local time 10:10 and DST active, and the top of the Sun card — The same reference, embedded as every station's first tab.

Airports on iPad

On iPad the browse and saved screens spread into a split view: the list on one side, the full reference page on the other, so scanning a country's fields never loses the page you were reading.

The United Kingdom browse screen on iPad in split view: the 220-airport UK list on the left with type filter chips and rows like EGPD Aberdeen and EGKK London, and the full EGLL reference page on the right under an Airport reference header - the identity card with its scheduled service pill, the timezone card with DST active, and the sun card with sunrise 06:03, sunset 20:04 and the twilight table — Browse on iPad: the country's list beside the full reference page.

Where next

Weather - the station workbench this reference lives in, and the METAR that feeds the crosswind matrix.
NOTAMs - the field's notices, one tab over from the Airport segment.
Free vs Pro - where the airport reference sits: entirely on the free side.