Route Analysis with FR24 and Skyvector

[BW901 58]

Something slightly off the main track, but I've been trying to find ways of analysing flight plan routings in Europe (other than having access to CFMU or whetever it's called these days). Airway overlay is available with subscription to Flightradar24.com but I found it a pain in the neck to try and use with replay. So I looked at taking .csv data for historic flights from FR24 (requires a subscription) and displaying that as a "route" overlay on Skyvector.com. That way I can pick a route, select an actual historic flight from the last 6 months and view the aircraft track to then quickly and easily build a route in PFPX. I wrote a macro enabled Excel file which converts from one format to the other - process is:

1. Save the .csv file from Flightradar24.com
2. Open the .csv file, highlight and copy the Position column
3. Paste into Cell A1 of the ROUTE FINDER tab in the Routefinder.xlsm file
4. Press the COMPILE button (this will also copy the position data output)
6. Open Skyvector.com, select Flight Plan (top left corner) and input Departure and Destination airports.
6. Paste the Excel output into the (big white) route box in skyvector.com.
If the flight path doesn't show immediately you may need to scroll to the last line, click after the last latlon entry and hit return.

 

Note - where there's no FR24 coverage, you'll just see a direct track. There's nothing I can do about that.

 

I'm no programmer, and I'm hoping that someone with more intelligence than me comes up with a better way of doing this, or offers a simpler solution! I'm aware there are a couple of flightsim-related websites which offer route information but this seemed the best way of using up-to-date real-world derived data.

Cheers

ROUTEFINDER.xlsm