Data Sources & Credits
Every source behind the charts, weather, terrain and procedures in Flight Kneeboard, and the licence each one is used under. A pilot should be able to see which agency a number came from.
Required credits
These are listed first because their licences bind: the basemap is on from first paint, the water mask is an adaptation we redistribute, and Leaflet and PDF.js ship inside the page. The map credits also appear on the map itself, in the attribution control at the bottom of the screen.
| Source | Used for | Licence |
|---|---|---|
| OpenStreetMap contributors | Basemap data | ODbL 1.0 |
| Esri, HERE, Garmin, OpenStreetMap contributors, and the GIS user community | Basemap tiles (Light and Dark Gray Canvas) | esri.com |
| ESA WorldCover 10 m v200 | Water mask | CC BY 4.0 |
| Esri | Satellite basemap tiles | esri.com |
| Leaflet 1.9.4 | Mapping library | BSD-2-Clause |
| PDF.js 3.11.174 (Mozilla) | PDF viewer for Sim Charts | Apache 2.0 |
| Adobe CMaps, Foxit and Liberation fonts (with PDF.js) | Drawing text in PDFs that do not embed their own fonts, including Chinese, Japanese and Korean | BSD-3-Clause, Foxit licence, SIL OFL 1.1 |
© ESA WorldCover project 2021 / Contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2021) processed by ESA WorldCover consortium. Flight Kneeboard reclassifies that product into a binary land/water mask; the mask is a modified version of the data and is not endorsed by ESA.
Aeronautical and weather data
US Government sources, in the public domain. Credited so you can see which agency a number came from.
| Source | Used for | Where |
|---|---|---|
| FAA | Charts, NASR, CIFP, d-TPP, weather cameras | faa.gov |
| NOAA / NWS | METAR/TAF, MRMS & nowCOAST radar, GFS model data | noaa.gov |
| NASA GIBS | Satellite imagery (GOES-West, GOES-East, Himawari) | nasa.gov |
| EUMETSAT | Satellite imagery (Meteosat 0° and Meteosat IODC infrared, via EUMETView); satellite rain estimate over Europe, Africa and the Middle East (H SAF h40b, MTG) | CC BY 4.0 |
| Environment and Climate Change Canada | Weather radar, Canada (MSC GeoMet). Data Source: Environment and Climate Change Canada | Open Government Licence – Canada |
| Deutscher Wetterdienst | Weather radar, Germany. Quelle: Deutscher Wetterdienst | CC BY 4.0 |
| Finnish Meteorological Institute | Weather radar, Finland | CC BY 4.0 |
| Dipartimento della Protezione Civile (Radar-DPC) | Weather radar, Italy (VMI mosaic), modified: recoloured and reprojected. Radar map images covering Italy are offered under the same licence, CC BY-SA 4.0 | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
| EUMETNET OPERA | Weather radar, Europe: the European national weather services' joint composite (about 180 national radars), used outside Germany and Finland | CC BY 4.0 |
| Central Weather Administration (Taiwan) | Weather radar, Taiwan (radar composite, O-A0059-001) | Open Government Data License, Taiwan v1.0 |
| Israel Meteorological Service | Weather radar, Israel (IMS radar rain rate, shown as reflectivity). The Eilat radar in it is the Water Authority's. Processed (recoloured) by Flight Kneeboard | IMS terms of use |
| Japan Meteorological Agency | Weather radar, Japan (high-resolution precipitation nowcast, observed frames). Source: JMA website, processed (recoloured) by Flight Kneeboard | Public Data License 1.0 |
| Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) | Satellite rain estimate (GSMaP_NOW), for areas without weather radar. GSMaP data by Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) | JAXA Terms of Use of Research Data |
| AWS Terrain Tiles (SRTM, NASADEM, 3DEP) | Terrain elevation | registry.opendata.aws |
| Iowa Environmental Mesonet, Iowa State University | LAMP MOS forecasts | mesonet.agron.iastate.edu |
| Natural Earth | Offline coastlines & borders | naturalearthdata.com |
Natural Earth is public domain; its terms state that crediting the authors is unnecessary. It is listed here for completeness only.
International base chart
Outside the United States the map is drawn on a World VFR base chart of terrain, water and towns. Its aviation overlay is community data, shown only in Flight Sim mode.
| Source | Used for | Licence |
|---|---|---|
| World VFR chart | Rendered base chart outside the US (OpenStreetMap, Copernicus DEM, JRC surface water, ESA WorldCover, Natural Earth, RGI glaciers) | Sources and coverage notice |
Flight Sim mode
The sources below are shown only with Flight Sim mode on (Settings → Flight Simulation), which is off by default. With it off, the app shows official sources only.
Outside the United States the airport register, airspace and obstacles come from open community datasets rather than a national authority. They are refreshed weekly and are not a substitute for the official AIP of the country you are flying in. Sim Charts come from ChartFox, a chart service for flight simulation; they are for flight simulation only, never for real-world navigation, and need your own free ChartFox account.
| Source | Used for | Licence |
|---|---|---|
| OurAirports | Airports, runways, frequencies and navaids outside the US | Public domain |
| openAIP | Airspace and obstacles outside the US | CC BY-NC 4.0 |
| ChartFox | Sim Charts: airport and procedure charts for flight simulation, shown as published, credited to the source ChartFox names on each chart. Chart data powered by ChartFox | ChartFox API terms |
How current is any of it?
Charts run on a 56-day cycle and procedures on a 28-day cycle. The app shows the effective and expiry dates for every product it holds under Settings › Data Source, so you can check what you are actually flying on rather than assuming. More about the cycles.