Case Study:
TopMeteo Flight Planning 2.0
Mobile-first relaunch of the flight planning tool for air sports pilots
Customer
TopMeteo Aviation Weather GmbH, based in Planetal in Brandenburg, creates precise aviation weather forecasts tailored to the needs of air sports pilots. Its forecasts support glider, powered aircraft, paraglider, hang-glider and balloon pilots with specialist data such as thermal activity, cloud distribution, visibility, wind speed and wind direction at different flight levels.
CosmoCode has developed and maintained the TopMeteo web application for many years as a long-term technology partner. Building on this collaboration, TopMeteo commissioned CosmoCode to completely relaunch one of the platform’s central modules: flight planning.
Project
The flight planning tool is integrated into the TopMeteo application. It allows pilots to plan an individual route and view the expected weather and wind conditions along that route for the selected time period. The existing application had grown over many years, but it was still strongly desktop-oriented and no longer reflected the current technical baseline.
The goal of “Flight Planning 2.0” was a complete rebuild with a consistent new design and a modern technology stack. A strict mobile-first approach was central to the project: pilots should be able to plan a route with just a few clicks or taps on a smartphone, then virtually “fly” the route using a time slider. The tool supports both advance checks at home and last-minute adjustments at the launch site, and it is designed for glider, paraglider and powered aircraft pilots alike.
Implementation
CosmoCode rebuilt the flight planning tool from the ground up. The new application uses a modern stack based on Next.js and TypeScript. End-to-end type safety makes the code more robust and catches errors at compile time, while the layout starts from the mobile design and only adapts for larger screens where this improves usability.
The heart of the application is an interactive map based on OpenLayers. On top of the base map, the application layers TopMeteo weather products, such as thermal maps, cloud distribution, winds at different altitudes and PFD values for potential cross-country distance. Airspaces and the planned route are placed in the correct visual order. User permissions determine exactly which maps and regions are available. Airfields, airspaces and, for paragliders, launch sites add the geodata needed for route planning.
The route planning workflow was expanded substantially. Pilots can place, move and duplicate waypoints, overlapping points are separated automatically, and a route can be closed with a single click. In addition to total distance, the tool calculates the FAI distance and displays the FAI sectors for the largest possible triangle, a key feature for cross-country flying. Coordinates are shown in the DMS format commonly used in aviation, autocomplete makes entry faster, and selected starting points and personal settings are saved for later sessions.
Particular care went into supporting different pilot profiles. Based on speed, altitude and the wind forecast, the application calculates flight times for individual route sections and displays the aircraft at the corresponding position along the route. Powered aircraft pilots have a dedicated return-flight mode, altitude units can be switched between feet and meters depending on the type of flying, and paraglider-specific workflows are supported as well.
Planned routes can be exported as GPX, CUP or TXT files for use in navigation apps or onboard navigation systems. Custom waypoints can be imported in CUP format, displayed on the map and hidden again when needed. CosmoCode also implemented a direct connection to the cross-country flight platform WeGlide: tasks can be exported and, after one-time OAuth authorization, uploaded directly to the user’s WeGlide account and declared for competitions. A QR code export makes routes easy to share.
A time slider with 10-minute resolution lets pilots virtually fly the planned route. This makes it immediately visible what the weather will look like at the aircraft’s position at a given moment: the weather and wind layers follow the pilot along the route. Map data is delivered through a GeoServer-based tile server, while the backend continues to build on the proven Python/Django foundation of the TopMeteo platform.
The new flight planning tool went live for the 2026 season and is available to TopMeteo users on smartphones, tablets and desktop computers. CosmoCode continues to develop it in close collaboration with the TopMeteo team.
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