I have over four thousand flying hours logged in all flight simulators combined. With over one and a half thousand flights, I have flown to every continent besides Antarctica and there are still places yet to explore. But I often find myself in this situation, where I just can’t find a flight that appeals to my taste.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Imagine the situation when you come back from school or work, check your favourite virtual airline and end up thinking that you want to fly something else. You check Flightradar24 and all of a sudden the number of flights you can choose from is overwhelming. In the end, you search for flights longer than you actually fly or end up not flying at all.
However, there is a new web browser app to help you with this. Welcome to Where2Fly and we are going to introduce it to you in this article.
What is Where2Fly?
Where2Fly is a straightforward and a good helper when you feel that you’ve got nothing to do in a flight simulator. Not only does it randomly generate your flight, but you can also choose between different settings to create your own experience with this tool.
It offers all the basic settings you need. You can choose your departure airport, the continent you want to fly to, the length of the flight and even the aircraft category.
In addition, it also checks VATSIM for ATC coverage and METAR for difficult weather conditions if you are looking for it. You can also choose between IFR and VFR rules and even the airlines you would like to fly.
How Does it Work?
Let’s put this into practice. My departure is going to be random, but I have to choose the destination area and aeroplane I want to fly with.
I am saying that I want to fly in Europe, with a random departure airport on a C-category plane like a Boeing 737 or Airbus A320. I do not feel like flying in terrible weather conditions, but I want to fly somewhere where we have ATC at the moment. I can’t decide on an airline, so I am leaving that to a random generation. Air time duration of a maximum of 2 hours suits me well with my schedule. I am also going to exclude small airports from the search, I don’t want to take off with a 737 from an airfield in a rural town.
Once I hit enter, Where2Fly gave me my results. It chose Bergen Airport as a departure, and many airports in the two-hour range within Scandinavia. Unfortunately, no ATC was in my range of search at that moment. However, it wasn’t a big deal for me in the end. If you seem not to like your results, you can always hit randomize to get new ones.
Among my destination airports, there was Kiruna Airport, which I have never been to in a flight simulator so my search was more than sufficient for my needs. However, a big downside is that the search is also going to recommend very strange air bases and military areas that are not that optimal to fly into with a civilian airliner. I heard that there might be some mentally unstable CIWS somewhere.
I went to check Flightradar24 for information about such a flight. Then I ended up finding out that such flight doesn’t exist at the moment. Well, as long as the flight doesn’t exist in real life, I am not recreating it, that’s my kink.
For the second try, I selected five different airlines that are based in Scandinavia to see what I was going to get. Now it definitely will sort out that I am keen on flying in this region, so hopefully, it is going to select the correct departure and arrival. And I was wrong in this part. Very wrong, let me be clear. Where2Fly chose Dubrovnik for me. Which is too far away and is not even operated by any of the airlines I selected.
Strange, considering that I selected any given airline in Scandinavia, Where2Fly still wanted me to fly more than 2 hours away from my desired region. Luckily immediately after the second search, it chose a flight from Rovaniemi to Helsinki Airport in Finland which is flown by Norwegian at the moment. Maybe I was just lucky with the RNG or Where2Fly genuinely realized that I may not want to fly in Croatia with any given Scandinavian airline.
Where2Fly has a Simbrief integration, which sends you immediately to dispatch. The flight from Helsinki to Rovaniemi is rather short, but it definitely meets the criteria.
So I flew from Helsinki to Rovaniemi as you can see in the screenshots used in this article.
The Top List
By definition, Where2Fly’s Top List accommodates destinations with the worst weather conditions at the moment. You are provided with an easy pictographic explanation of why it is like that and with a METAR, too.
There is also a filter based on which you can choose to see airports in a desired region like Europe, North America, South America and so on.
This might be especially useful if you seriously desire to fly in terrible weather conditions and I can see why many people would like to experience this challenge. Setting up your own harsh weather within the simulator weather engine is simple, but there is more magic in it when there is such weather somewhere in real life.
My Recommendations
Where2Fly is not exactly a random-flight generator. It is going to give you origin and destination, but it is not exactly going to give you everything you may want. So if you want to make your choices completely random, you need to use a random number generator as well, at least I did that.
For example, use a random number generator by Google. Choose five different airlines and assign a single-digit or a double-digit number between 0-100 to each of them. When the random number generator gives you an answer between 0-100, decide what is the answer closest to, and fly that airline. Put that into Where2Fly and it is going to give you more choices.
You can use this technique with aeroplanes, too. But then you will have to keep in mind the airline which you chose.
Things to Look Out For
We have to keep in mind that this is a new project and thus there are some issues that may occur. After further testing, I found out that sometimes you have to hit randomize multiple times, as it is going to give you absolutely ridiculous results. The search I made AFTER my very first one was quite tough and also with any given Scandinavian airline selected, 2 hours flight time maximum and flying to medium to large sized airports, it was still offering me air bases and sometimes it wouldn’t even find a flight within my choices.
Thus, it may take a bit of time to get a search that is not straightforward and ridiculous, especially considering the airport recommendations it sometimes gives you. You have to look out for that and be prepared that you are going to hit refresh a few times until it is going to recommend you a proper flight.
Where2Fly is a helpful ally for you when you just can’t decide on what flight you want to fly. It offers you various choices and you can completely customize your flight how you want and fly wherever you want.
Lastly, I should mention that the concept Where2Fly offers is unique, and I am thrilled to see what they have to offer in the future. In the end, it’s free for everyone to use so give it a try.
