topic Re: FAA charts map service? in Aviation Questions

FAA charts map service?

Will — Wed, 17 Jan 2024 22:39:39 GMT

For years our organization has used a reliable FAA charts service hosted by "Chartbundle" but recently it seems to have gone down or disappeared or no longer shared publicly - last seen here: https://www.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=597896e2ea9e4c4abd5951b155bfb61f , and the Chartbundle company website seems to be down also, so dunno if that's a temporary thing due to weather etc.? Anyone know of another service offering the latest scanned Sectional charts? No easy management task I suppose as the charts can change every few months, but very much needed so we can easily see our own organizational operational layers in context of FAA airspace for drone flight planning, etc. Is FAA hosting anything like this? Thanks for any insight.

Re: FAA charts map service?

KiyoshiYamashita — Wed, 17 Jan 2024 23:26:51 GMT

The FAA does have a service like this, but it is still internal only at the moment. Skyvector (https://skyvector.com/) also hosts all of the FAA enroute and sectional charts, but I've only ever used it through the browser, not sure whether their service can be used outside their site. Finally, FAA also publishes all of their charts as geoTIFs so downloading and/or creating your own service might be possible as well.

Also fwiw - it looks like chartbundle has shut down (they commented on this thread https://www.pilotsofamerica.com/community/threads/sectionals-for-google-earth-anybody-know-what-happened-to-chartbundle.145754/).

Re: FAA charts map service?

Will — Thu, 18 Jan 2024 02:33:58 GMT

Thanks @KiyoshiYamashita ! Yes, we're aware of the Skyvector option, but that doesn't let us bring our own ArcGIS Online layers into context with the latest sectionals, and I believe at times I've also seen Skyvector's charts slightly lagging behind the latest charts. We're also aware of the FAA chart source downloads, but as a CA statewide organization, we don't have the capacity to keep updated and host a service like this for ourselves. This type of service is greatly needed for a variety of reasons not to mention public safety. I'm really surprised FAA hasn't made a public offering for this (anyone out there in FAA-land listening?) or could Esri perhaps curate and host one in the Living Atlas? Thanks again for any help or leads.

Re: FAA charts map service?

KiyoshiYamashita — Thu, 18 Jan 2024 15:41:34 GMT

@Will - looks like I was wrong... FAA services are shared publicly now. There are four services altogether:

Re: FAA charts map service?

DavidWickliffe — Thu, 18 Jan 2024 15:49:10 GMT

FAA Does have Enroute and Sectional chart service, although I am not sure how often it is updated.

https://adds-faa.opendata.arcgis.com/ scroll to the bottom of the page to FAA Visual Chart and Enroute Chart Viewers. You can open App or see 'App Details' for each, and from there you can copy the URL in lower right to add data to Pro as 'Data from a Path'. The Enroute has more than one (High, Low, and a couple for chart indexes)

Re: FAA charts map service?

KiyoshiYamashita — Thu, 18 Jan 2024 15:55:33 GMT

Good call @DavidWickliffe ! That's a much easier way to find it. I had to dig around to find the individual services. The open data site you linked also includes some of the actual data that goes into the maps, which might be useful as well.

Re: FAA charts map service?

DavidWickliffe — Thu, 18 Jan 2024 16:14:16 GMT

@KiyoshiYamashita Looks like we were replying at the same time- I did not see your answer when I replied!

Re: FAA charts map service?

Will — Fri, 19 Jan 2024 01:07:47 GMT

Thanks everyone for the replies, so very happy to hear FAA is hosting chart services! This info exchange is a classic example of when the Esri Community forums are invaluable. Perhaps someone with existing posting capability can post in that pilotsofamerica forum mentioned earlier to let them know about the FAA service options for anyone that that was using Chartbundle's now defunct service? And for the record, below are links to the ArcGIS Online (AGOL) items/descriptions for the FAA services, and a graphic showing how I discovered them there. Per their AGOL item descriptions, sounds like they're being actively updated. And if anyone from FAA is reading this, those services really should be more formally titled than simply "VFR_Sectional" for example and marked "Authoritative" in ArcGIS Online (since FAA is hosting them) to make them easier to find - when I was trying to add them to an existing ArcGIS Online web map, I found the easiest way was to find them from the Browse/Add Data dialog was using the layer ID string. And I didn't see mention of these services on the FAA VFR Raster Charts page, so noting the availability of the services there would also be useful.

VFR Sectionals
https://faa.maps.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=6ab79dc5de5743adb3e3b6e3c803aa59

VFR Terminal Area Charts (TACs)
https://faa.maps.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=ba711890a6f24720bf63a77c5aeb1e64

IFR Enroute Low
https://faa.maps.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=97ab03c55bb442b897daeba53a5cc85d

IFR Enroute High
https://faa.maps.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=0cb4491ce486481e9d81de2234b13332

Re: FAA charts map service?

RomanKozulia — Fri, 22 Aug 2025 14:45:53 GMT

Hi everyone! I put together an open-source service that provides the same functionality. Feel free to use it for your own applications.

https://pypi.org/project/aviation-chart-server/1.0.5/