Advice Needed on How to Route a Trip

[wyvonnia]

I would like to know if there is any website available that gives the mileage total from one airport to another (from one particular city/state to another). Google maps helps route a trip by ground but not by air. I need to arrange a transport via air from Missouri to Connecticut and would like to break it down into three or four legs for three-four different pilots. Many do not want to fly more than 300 miles so I would like to figure the route ahead of time and then contact pilots in the appropriate areas. Does anyone have advice for me on this? Thank you.

Wyvonnia

[Jon]

Go here Wyvonnia.

You can search airports by state or put in the identifiers (precede the three letter identifier with a "K") and if you scroll down you can see on the RH side where you can ask it the distance between airports.

http://www.airnav.com/

Hope this helps.

[davidtg]

Wyvonnia --

Thanks so much for asking! It is incredibly helpful to me as a pilot to have a suggestion from which to begin; then I can see where I can help instead of having to start from scratch.

I would like to know if there is any website available that gives the mileage total from one airport to another (from one particular city/state to another)
[snip]

In addition to http://airnav.com/ as recommended by Jon, I use landings.com -> Flight planning -> Flight planning = http://www.landings.com/evird.acgi$pass ... t_apt.html to map out the trip. Put the beginning airport in the "starting" field and the ending airport in the "destination" fields, and optionally add potential airports in the "enroute" field. Most importantly, check the "show area map" box. That will then tell you the total distance for the legs as well as show other airports along the way.

The landings site gives me lots of other information, but both the airnav airport finder and the landings flight planner are in my browser history, so I tend to go with them :-) A couple of other good places to go are http://navmonster.com/ and http://gc.kls2.com (the Great Circle Mapper). Pilots always need fuel, too, so checking nearby prices at http://100ll.com/ can point out one airport as better than another for a handoff point.


HTH & HAND

[Jon]

Tagging on here, I strongly urge that rescues understand the distance between two airports may not be the real world distance and that the request for a transport recognize that while a lot of our flights can be in a straight line, there are and will be reasons why that will not happen.

I often fly from Knoxville TN to Jamestown NY. That is going to be a straight line.

I also often fly from Knoxville to Greensboro NC and the routing is to a specific fix, then I have to fly a published arrival procedure. It is a "dog leg" route. Occasionally I can negotiate direct routing once I have traveled about 50 miles but I cannot count on that.

Yesterday I had to deal with the Washington DC restricted area and I had very convoluted routing adding to my distance and fuel burn. Again I can sometimes negotiate better routing, but it the area controllers are busy they will not grant any shortcuts.

So actual routing will depend on TFRs (temporary flight restrictions), arrival routes, military operations areas, restricted areas and prohibited areas. The weather and altitudes are also going to dictate routing. So the best advice is that rescues and pilots should talk about transports, leg lengths, instrument approaches or cheap fuel all of which are variables depending on circumstances on the day of the transport.

[wyvonnia]

Thank you all soooo much for your help and advice. It will help a great deal in the future! I figure the more leg work I can do it will help facilitate the transport request process.

Wyvonnia