About PlaneWX

PlaneWX is a sophisticated flight planning and weather briefing application that provides pilots with intelligent, route-specific weather analysis using AI.

Core Functionality

Automated Weather Briefing Generation

• Pilots input departure/arrival airports, route, departure time, and aircraft type
• The system fetches relevant aviation weather products from NOAA/NWS sources
• Grok AI analyzes the weather data and generates comprehensive briefings in plain language
• Briefings are tailored to the specific timeframe, route corridor, and pilot experience level

Intelligent Product Selection

• Automatically determines which weather products are relevant based on departure timing (imminent, near-term, medium-term, long-range, very long-range)
• Fetches only what's needed: METARs, TAFs, PIREPs, G-AIRMETs, SIGMETs, AFDs, WPC discussions, CPC outlooks, and GFS model data
• Applies geographic filtering to reduce data to only stations/reports along the flight route

Weather Cache System

• Pre-caches large weather datasets (METARs, TAFs, PIREPs, G-AIRMETs, SIGMETs, AFDs) every 6 hours
• Stores data in Vercel Blob storage for fast retrieval
• Fetches extended-range products (WPC, CPC, GFS) on-demand to avoid storage limits
• Smart refresh logic tracks what's updated vs. skipped

User Features

• User authentication via Supabase
• Save and manage multiple trips/routes
• View past briefings
• Weather products preview page for debugging and verification
• Admin dashboard for cache management

Technical Architecture