Browse Flights by Route, Not Just by Search
The /routes section is no longer a "coming soon" placeholder. Pick from popular routes, search by ICAO pair, get to a detail page in two clicks.
🛫 What's new
/routes now shows a grid of 24 community-verified popular routes, an ICAO → ICAO search form, and links to a per-route detail page for any city pair you can think of.
Popular routes, ordered by trust
The grid on /routes is generated server-side from theflights table. Routes are sorted by community feedback (the green thumbs-up counter we shipped a while back) and then by how often the route appears in our database. Flagged routes are excluded so the page never recommends something the community has already pushed back on.
Each card shows the city pair as ICAO codes, the flight count we've seen for it, and the cumulative confirmation count. Click any card and you land on the route detail page in a single hop — same one you can also reach via the search form.
The data refreshes every 10 minutes via ISR — fast page loads, fresh enough rankings.
ICAO-to-ICAO search
Right under the hero is a two-field form: From and To. Type two ICAO codes and you're on the detail page. Inputs auto-uppercase as you type, the form validates that both codes are exactly four alphanumeric characters and that they aren't identical.
This is the "I know exactly what I want to look up" shortcut. No search filters, no scoring, no ATC negotiation — just show me what we know about this city pair. Useful for double-checking a planned flight against community data.
What you get on the detail page
We've been rebuilding the per-route detail page in parallel. It now includes a 3D globe view of the great-circle path with live VATSIM ATC indicators — but that's its own post; we covered it in “Your routes, on a 3D globe with live VATSIM coverage”.
The detail page also shows whatever flight data we have for the pair: operating airline, aircraft, duration, distance, plus the community feedback indicators. If the community has flagged something as potentially inaccurate, you'll see the amber alert icon.
Help us make the data better
The popular-routes grid only gets better as more pilots confirm or flag flights. If you spot a wrong entry, hit the small red flag button. If you fly a route that's clearly missing, add it via the single-route form — it's live in everyone's search within minutes.