Where our navigation data comes from

The trainers use real published aeronautical data rather than made-up identifiers, because typing a procedure that exists is most of what makes the practice worth anything. Here is every source we draw on, what it covers, and what it does not.

Coverage

Procedures are United States only; airports are global. Every source that covers departures and arrivals outside the United States either forbids redistribution or requires you to link an account, and both would break the promise that these trainers are free and need no sign-up. So a non-US airport gives you a real position and a real runway list, and says plainly that it carries no procedures.

The data is a fixed publication cycle, not the current AIRAC. It is here so the trainers can teach real procedures with realistic identifiers, and it is not maintained for flight planning or for real-world navigation.

Sources

Why runway lists show no heading

Runway lists in the trainers give the identifier and the length, and never a heading. The two sources disagree about what a heading even means — OurAirports publishes true headings, the FAA data publishes magnetic ones — and there is no magnetic variation figure for most of the world in either. A single number labelled “heading” would therefore be wrong wherever variation is large, and wrong in a way that looks perfectly plausible. We would rather leave it out than show you something you cannot tell is wrong.

Not for real-world navigation. Always fly from current, official charts.