Ops Map

Ops Map is the Desk's briefing map: a full-window aviation chart with a route engine on top of it, a stack of weather, hazard, NOTAM and traffic layers, and one time cursor that every layer answers to. It is a web-only workbench. It is not a moving map: there is no own-ship position, and the strip under the chart carries the module's standing line, "Not for navigation", beside the data credits at every zoom.

Find your way around

The chart fills the whole content column. The shared top bar steps aside on this page, so the sidebar is the only frame around the map; Cmd+K still opens the command deck from anywhere on it.

How to plot a route

1. Open Ops Map from the Planning group of the sidebar, or press Cmd+K and type "ops".
2. Press B, or click the Layers pill, to open the Route & layers panel. It opens on the Layers tab; click Route (or Plot a route on the strip that says no route is plotted).
3. Under From your flights, click a leg to plot it. The leg you plot shows Plotted; a leg with no filed route is marked Endpoints only and draws its two airports.
4. Or paste an ICAO Item 15 string under Paste a route (the field's example is "KJFK DCT WAVEY J174 ORF ... KMIA") and click Plot route, or press Enter (Shift+Enter starts a new line).
5. Read the result. A clean plot folds the Route panel to its summary - the route string and how many points were plotted ("All 11 points plotted" in the frame below) - with Change to reopen it. On the Layers and Share tabs the same route rides a strip under the tabs, with Change to jump back here.
6. Check the two lists that appear when something could not be drawn: Not plotted names each token and why, and Procedures lists any SID or STAR. The panel says it plainly: "SID and STAR geometry is not expanded - the line joins the terminal fix where one is known."

The route survives moving around the app. To have it come back after a reload or in a new tab, switch on Reopen with my last route at the foot of the Route tab; it is off by default and stored in this browser only.

How to filter the layers to the route

1. On the Layers tab, find Corridor filter under the rows of the Route group and switch it on, or press O. It needs a plotted route.
2. Pick the width: 25, 50, 100 or 200 nm (50 is the default).
3. Watch the chart: NOTAMs, SIGMET / CWA / G-AIRMET, ash and cyclone advisories and PIREPs outside the corridor drop away; station plots, winds, radar, satellite, isobars and the base map dim outside the dashed band instead; traffic is never filtered. The Corridor · 50 nm pill appears top right.

With the NOTAM layer on, each field inside the corridor carries a pill counting its active NOTAMs with a severity icon. Zoom into a field and the layer starts drawing: closed taxiways and runway segments are hatched on the airport layout from the NOTAMs themselves, each with a chip pinned to the pavement, and re-read against the time cursor.

How to stack layers

1. Open the Route & layers panel and click Layers.
2. Type in Find a layer (press / to focus it) and press Enter to toggle the first match, or scroll the groups: Route, Weather, Hazards, NOTAMs, Traffic, Base map and Chart. Each group header counts "3 of 6 on".
3. Click a row's toggle, or press its bare key while the chart has focus. The keycap sits on the row, and ? shortcuts at the foot of the panel lists all of them.
4. Click a row's gear to open its settings dialog - a centred card with the row's glyph, label and honesty caption in the header, the dim ladder and the layer's own options in the body: the flight level for Winds aloft, the product for Satellite, the filters for NOTAMs. Escape or the backdrop closes it, and the list itself stays a list of switches; switching a layer on never opens its settings.
5. Read the On now chips at the top of the tab to see what is lit; the x on a chip switches that layer off.

Rows carry a one-line note where it matters: "US only - fetches when on" under the ILS feathers and TFR rows, "US (IEM NEXRAD), Canada (ECCC), Germany (DWD) - inside coverage only, fetches when on" under Radar, "Fetches only when on" under NOTAMs, and "Shading only, never terrain clearance" under Terrain shading. A TFR whose FAA listing carries a single date is read as an open-ended start - hidden before it, never hidden after it - and its popup says "no end date in the list". The panel only lists what the data source has; outside a source's coverage the layer draws nothing and says so rather than reading as clear. Data off at the foot of the panel switches every drawn data layer off and keeps the base map, and the panel remembers your layer stack between visits.

How to scrub the time cursor

Every weather, hazard and NOTAM layer is evaluated at one instant, the time cursor in the dock under the chart. The cursor starts on LIVE, following the clock.

1. Drag the marker on the track, or press , and . to step ten minutes back and forward (Shift+, and Shift+. step an hour; the mouse wheel over the timeline does the same).
2. Read the chip beside the readout: PAST means the layers show the states valid at that earlier time, from data already fetched, "Not a historical archive"; FORECAST means they show what their forecasts and validity windows say for that later time, "Never current data relabelled".
3. Press Space, or click Play, to sweep the cursor across the range as a time-lapse. With radar or satellite on it steps their real frames and loops. Space again, or Pause, stops it.
4. Click Prev or Next, or press ** and ** with the timeline focused, to jump to the previous or next change on the event strip - a NOTAM or advisory starting or ending, a report observed.
5. Click Now, or press 0, and every layer snaps back to LIVE.

The AT CURSOR line under the track sums up what the layers on hold for that instant, and the strip draws one lane per event layer - NOTAM, SIGMET, PIREP, ASH/TC, RADAR, SAT, TFR and LTG - so you can see what happens across the range before you scrub to it. Each layer states how it follows the cursor in its own settings: NOTAMs are re-classified against their validity window, station categories read the TAF segment for that time, PIREPs show the two hours before it, and the imagery basemap never follows it at all. The chevron at the end of the dock folds it to one slim row; Timeline expands it again.

How to open the vertical cross-section

1. With a route plotted, switch on Vertical cross-section in the Route group, or press X. The row is offered only while Winds aloft or SIGMET / CWA / G-AIRMET is on - without one of them the section has nothing to draw but the ground.
2. The section docks under the chart as a desk, headed with the route length, the ceiling and the cursor time ("Section · 676 nm · surface to FL450 · 23/18:41Z").
3. Read the toolbar row. The level control starts on the leg's planned level (with none it reads "No planned level on this leg - step to try one"); step it one flight level at a time to try another ("is FL320 clear?") - the try level is never written back to the leg. Beside it a verdict chip states what the measured level crosses and how far ahead the next crossing sits, named by the nearest fix ("crosses 4 advisories, 2 SIGWX areas · inside one now"), with Jump to next; a zero reads on the neutral tone, never green. The band chips carry their counts - Terrain, Winds / ISA, SIGWX areas · 4, Tropopause, Advisories · 4 - and a switched-off chip is struck through.
4. Read the plot: the crossed stretches are painted on the planned line in the product's tone, filed fixes read bold with their even-speed ETA, and the wind barbs nearest the crosshair draw at full ink.
5. Read the ribbon under the plot - one row per crossed product with its family tag, hazard words, along-route span, the fixes it sits between and its own vertical words. Click a row to jump there and pin the crosshair inside the box.
6. Hover the plot, or use the arrow keys, to read a point; Page Up and Page Down jump fix to fix. The point card docked at the right (below the plot on a narrow panel) reads the altitude, the along-route position, the ETA, the nearest-node wind on a true-north dial with its head or tail and crosswind split against the route's own course, the temperature with its ISA deviation, the terrain band under the point and the margin to its ceiling (worded as a band figure, never a clearance), the hazards containing the point as rows that open the product, and the tropopause. Click to pin the crosshair so your eye can leave the plot; a second click or Escape releases it.
7. Read the source lines under the plot: the winds name the NOAA GFS model and its fetch time, SIGWX names WAFS, terrain names ETOPO, and the advisories are the map layer's own plotted set with each product's vertical extent. Collapse at the right end of the toolbar folds the desk to that one row - the level, the verdict chip and the band counts stay in view; Expand brings the plot back.

The section follows the time cursor like every other layer. Terrain is drawn from model cells for orientation only; the row's own caption says it is never terrain clearance. The fold is local to the panel: a shared link opens the full desk.

How to read a field or a NOTAM from the map

1. Click an airport on the chart. The Field info card opens beside it with the flight category, Conditions (the raw METAR), Runways with their lengths, Radio frequencies in MHz, the field's Local time beside UTC, and sun times ("Sun times: NOAA model, computed on device.").
2. Click Open airport to go to the airport page, or Open on Watch Desk in the card's Watch section to see the field screened against your aircraft profile - "Facts beside your own numbers, never a verdict."
3. Click a NOTAM pill or a hatched closure to open the NOTAM popup with the raw text, its status at the cursor time ("Not yet in force at cursor time", "Ended before cursor time", or a D) schedule note), an Esc keycap to close and Open in NOTAMs for the full workbench. A tight cluster offers Zoom in to separate. A ring so large its box covers more than half the view is a backdrop: its fill takes no click, its outline and pin still do, so a stray click on the chart never opens a FIR-scale NOTAM.
4. Station plots print the flight category, or a word that says why there is none: "Awaiting" while a fetch runs, "No METAR" for a field that publishes none or reported NIL, "No forecast" for a scrubbed instant with no TAF to read. A METAR over 60 min old turns the plot's dot into a hollow ring; over 3 h old, or with an unreadable time, the plot fades to a dashed marker reading STALE - the category is the last known one, not current.
5. With the NOTAM layer on, switch on Fields in view in its settings to query the airfields visible on screen as well as the route's; zoomed out too far, the panel says so and asks you to zoom in.

Every module drawn on the chart restates its own footer in the credit strip: "Reference only - verify officially." for weather, "May be incomplete - verify officially." for NOTAMs. A field with no data shows no category rather than a guess.

How to see community traffic

1. Switch on Traffic in the Traffic group, or press T. The layer is for awareness at the desk; the strip under the chart adds its own line the moment it is on: "Community ADS-B - incomplete and delayed. Not for traffic separation or collision avoidance."
2. Read the TRAFFIC chip at the foot of the chart for the feed age. Each aircraft is labelled with its callsign, altitude and ground speed; click one for its detail card.
3. In the row's settings, type a callsign, registration or hex under Find aircraft to fly the camera to that aircraft. The aircraft you select always draws its trail; switch on Show other aircraft trails to draw recent reported positions for every aircraft. The watchlist there takes the aircraft you care about and either fades the rest (Fade others) or hides them (Only these).
4. Click Move coverage and then a point on the map to centre the query away from the map centre; Follow map again drops the pin.

Community receivers are thin over parts of the world - much of the Middle East, Africa, central Asia and Siberia, the oceans and the poles. When the query ring covers enough of one, a pill under the TRAFFIC chip names it ("Iran · receivers typically sparse") and the panel says the same in full, from a hand-maintained region list: some aircraft there may be missing, and an empty view there is not an empty sky.

How to share the view

1. Open the Route & layers panel and click Share.
2. Under Link to this view, click Copy link, or press L anywhere on the map. The link restores the route, the layer stack, the corridor, the time offset and the camera for whoever opens it; a link copied on LIVE reopens on LIVE.
3. Under Briefing pack, click Add page to capture the current map into the flight briefing pack PDF. The snapshot carries the "Not for navigation" badge and lands beside the matching leg of the brief.
4. Under Download image, pick a Size and click Download PNG for the current map view, with the watermark, credits, capture stamp and any omissions burned in, plus a manifest file listing what is and is not in the image. A line under the row names what the image will leave out before you download it - on-screen markers such as station plots and fix labels, and "live traffic never exported" while traffic is on.

How to watch the route

1. On the Route tab, click Watch this route.
2. Read the three rules the panel lists - Runway closed, Aerodrome closed and Approach aid unserviceable - and click Add the rules, or Cancel.
3. The rules land on the Watch Desk for the route's airports, and alerts arrive in the in-app feed only; nothing is pushed or emailed unless you widen the channels there. If the route is already watched, the panel says so instead of adding twins. Open Watch Desk takes you there.

Keyboard shortcuts

All of these are bare keys and work while the chart has focus, never while you are typing in a field; press ? for the full list on screen.

On iPhone and iPad

The iOS app carries the same chart engine as the Aviation Map tab - airports, navaids, airspace, runway labels and offline region packs - without the Ops Map workbench: no route paste, no layer stack, no time cursor, no cross-section and no traffic layer. Those stay on the desk.

Troubleshooting

Plot route fails with "Could not plot the route". Read the detail under the field. If the Route tab says "US navdata unavailable - fixes and airways will not expand", the navdata cycle has not loaded yet; a Cycle expired chip means the bundled cycle is out of date and the strip will say which tokens were not plotted.

A NOTAM row says "Runway closed" but nothing is hatched on the runway. Open the popup: the NOTAM is not in force at the cursor time, or its D) schedule excludes this hour. The chart draws a closure only while it is in force at the cursor.

The radar or satellite lane is empty. Radar covers the US, Canada and Germany and draws inside that coverage only; satellite products cover their own rings. The row's note says which, and an empty lane means no frames for the range, not clear skies.

The map has no NOTAM pills for a field I can see. Fields in view is off or the map is zoomed out past the level it queries; the layer's panel says "Zoomed out too far to query the fields in view - zoom in, or select stations in the NOTAM workbench." Remember the workbench's line: the absence of a NOTAM here is not an all-clear.

A shortcut letter does nothing. The chart does not have focus - click the map once. Letters are ignored while a text field is focused, and Cmd or Ctrl chords belong to the command deck, not the map.

Where next

• NOTAMs - the full workbench behind Open in NOTAMs, with the same filters the map layer uses.
• Weather - the station readouts behind the plots and the Field info card.
• Flight Brief - the legs that plot with one click and the briefing pack the snapshot lands in.
• Keyboard and command deck - Cmd+K, the number keys and the global chords the map never shadows.