Using Google Earth for Flight Planning (almost)

You'll notice the title of this HubPage says you can ALMOST use Google Earth for your flight planning. We're not quite at the place where we can depend on the sectional chart overlays to be the most current, so you shouldn't use this method for actual flight planning. The best bet is to subscribe to a sectional chart subscription service and stay safe.

WAIT... don't turn away yet. All this doesn't mean you're not able to use this. Truth is, using sectional chart overlays on Google Earth will give you a lot of great information about your flight and can come in very handy, especially if you're flying into new territory. They're so helpful, I wish more flight schools would show their students this little secret and help them visualize the airspace they're flying through.

I'll assume, if you're a private pilot, you'll know exactly what a sectional chart is and have a good working knowledge of how it works and what information it can give you. What you may not know is how it can integrate with Google Earth. So, let's start with Google Earth.

Google Earth is like Google Maps satellite view on steroids. It's a free application you download here (Google Earth) that gives you highly detailed satellite imagry for almost every spot on the earth (hence the name).

Just like Google Maps, you can type in any location by address, landmark, GPS coordinates or numerous other methods and instantly be taken there. Then you can almost instantly zoom in and out as well as tilting your view. You can move in all 3 dimensional directions and it's very fluid and easy to operate.

The technology in Google Earth allows you users to create 3-D renderings of famous locations. You can take a tour of all the Major League Baseball stadiums done up in 3-D, or just about any area of geographic interest. They've recently upgrade and your tours can now include audio narration. It's truly an amazing tool which shocks almost everyone the moment they start using it. The fact that it's free is an added bonus.

So, assuming you've now downloaded Google Earth (above), let's put in the aeronautical sectionals and overlay them on top of this very detailed satellite imagery.

The Aeronautical Sectional charts are available in digital form, but I must warn you again, even though these looks exactly like your paper sectionals, you must not assume these are current or completely accurate.

If you've already downloaded and installed Google Earth you're ready for these next steps.

1. Launch Google Earth
2. Click here to get your digital sectional charts for use with Google Earth.
3. This should prompt you to open these with Google Earth. If not, select "Open with" and choose the application yourself.
4. Go to the area in Google Earth called "temporary places" and click on "Aero_Charts" and you'll see a listing of the options you can select.
5. Select "sectionals" and Google Earth will begin to open all of the sectionals for the lower 48 states. Depending on the speed of your computer, this may take a while.
6. Click on some of the other options and begin to explore. You'll really enjoy the 3D airspace option.

If you're flying into an area you've never visited, you may want to take a look at what you're going to see as you approach.  The best way to do this is to use your sectional overlays and then use the slider at the bottom of the places blox to fade the transparency of the sectionals.

When you do this you can observe what the landscape looks like around your destination.  You can even change the angle or perspective you have on the location and give yourself a pretty good idea of what to look for on as your 5, 10 or 20 miles out. 

If you're flying into a Class C or B airspace or flying to an airport near one of these airports,  It might help you to turn on the 3D Airspace option.  When you do this and tild your view, you'll see areas you can fly below or even between two different restricted airspaces.  This is great when you get into some very congested areas.  For a good example look at the Orlando International airspace and how it butts up to the Cape Canaveral restricted airspace.  If you look properly, you'll see a little corrado of unrestricted airspace you can fly through.