A flight route animation, from two airport codes.

Type where you took off and where you landed — a code, a city, an airport’s name — and Sky İnk flies the route over a 3D globe: take-off, cruise and descent, as a short vertical film.

How it works

1. Enter the airports. IST and LHR, or the cities' names. A connection is a stop in between; a multi-city trip is a few more. Up to eight in one route.
2. Pick the plane and the look. An airliner, a jet or a propeller plane on the arc; the earth as a photograph, a relief, a blueprint or a drawn map by day or by night; the route in the colour you like.
3. Watch it fly, then send it. Take-off from the first airport, a chase along the arc with the horizon in view, descent into the last — and at the end the whole route on the globe. Vertical for the feed, square, or wide.

What the film shows

The true arc of the flight, the way it looks from far above — a long flight bends toward the pole, a short one keeps both airports in the frame. The plane leaves the ground with the camera and lands with it; each airport is named as it arrives. A week of flying fits in one route: eight stops, one film.

The look

Four looks for the earth: Satellite, NASA's photograph of the planet; Terrain, its relief in colour; Blueprint, the relief in two blues; and Day, a map in a day map's colours, drawn from open data. Each look has its own close-up for the start and the end of a leg; the route's colour and width are yours to set, and a look you like is kept for the next film.

Where to make it

On iPhone — the Sky İnk app, on the App Store: the film renders on the phone and is saved to Photos; nothing is uploaded. In your browser — the studio at skyink.co, on a phone or a desktop: the film renders on our server and is yours to download for a week. Building a route works without an account; keeping things — the film, a look, a favourite stop — asks you to sign in, with Apple, with Google or with an email link. There is no password.

The things people ask

• Which airports does it know? Airports the world over, by code, by city or by name.
• Can a route return to the same airport? Yes — IST, LHR, IST is a return trip.
• Is it the real flight path? It is the great-circle route, the shortest line between the two airports over the globe, which is what a long flight follows closely. It is not a tracked path.
• Can the film continue on the ground? Yes. Add the drive from the airport, or the train to the next city, as its own leg.

Make your film