For comprehension and comparison's sake, I thought it would be worthwhile to compare American civilian aeronautical charts during three different time periods: World War II, the 1970s and the present.
World War IIThe
second edition of
Practical Air Navigation, published in 1945, lists nine types of aeronautical charts:
Name - Scale- Standard Charts
- Planning Charts - 1:5,000,000
- Radio Direction Finding Charts - 1:2,000,000
- Regional Charts - 1:1,000,000
- Sectional Charts - 1:500,000
- Local Charts - 1:250,000
- Airport Charts - 1:126,720
- Special Purpose Charts
- Magnetic/Isogonic Charts - 1:5,000,000
- Great Circle Chart - 1:5,000,000
- Outline Charts - 1:2,500,000
This is an increase from the six offered pre-war, according to the
1939 edition of the publication. The local, airport and outline were the new charts. (However, a series of double-sided sheets called
Airway Bulletins published from 1928 to 1931 did profile individual airports. So did the USAAF's
Airport Directory of the Continental United States (Volume
1,
2,
3). These appear to be what eventually evolved into the modern airport diagrams mentioned later. Similarly, the
strip maps may have evolved into enroute charts.) It also specifically notes that there are "a series of 43 planning charts covering the entire world has been prepared for the use of the Air Forces" that are not yet available to the public. This refers to the
1970sA mail order catalog from 1973 listing the following charts as available to purchase:
- Enroute High Altitude Charts
- Enroute Low Altitude Charts
- Area Navigation (RNAV) High Altitude Chart
- Planning Chart
- World Aeronautical Charts
- Alaska Aeronautical Charts
- Alaska Enroute Low Altitude Charts
- Alaska Enroute High Altitude Charts
- Operational Navigational Charts
- Enroute Pacific Ocean and Hawaii Islands Chart
- Aeronautical and Operational Navigation Charts
- Sectional and VFR Terminal Area Chart
PresentToday, according to the
Aeronautical Chart Users' Guide, the FAA has divided charts into three major categories:
Each category contains several types of maps:
- VFR Charts
- Sectional
- Terminal Area
- Helicopter
- Grand Canyon
- Caribbean
- Planning
- IFR Enroute Charts
- Enroute Low
- Enroute High
- Area
- Caribbean
- Gulf of Mexico
- Planning
- Terminal Procedures Publication
- Instrument Approach Procedure (IAP)
- Departure Procedure (DP)
- Standard Terminal Arrival (STAR)
- Charted Visual Flight Procedure (CVFP)
- Airport Diagrams (AD)
- Other
To end, a list of links to index maps:
- Sectional (1939)
- Regional (1939)
- Radio Direction Finding (1939)
- Sectional & Regional with Sectional Numbers (1943?)
- Sectional & Regional (1945)
- Alaska (1945)
- Regional & International (1945)
- Sectional (2024)
- Sectional, Alaska (2024)
- Terminal (2024)
- Terminal, Alaska (2024)
- Terminal, Caribbean (2024)
- Enroute, Low Altitude (2024)
- Enroute, High Altitude (2024)
- Enroute, Low Altitude, Alaska (2024)
- Enroute, High Altitude, Alaska (2024)
- Enroute, Hawaii/Pacific (2024)
- Enroute, Caribbean (2024)
- Gulf of Mexico (2024)
A few other non-index, but still relevant, maps:
As a final note, as pointed out by an
article on the subject on the website Beautiful Public Data, existence of alternatives such as Jeppesen we are quite lucky that the government provides such data free of charge to any and all aircrew. For all of the headaches that the bureaucracy and regulations at the FAA can cause, the production of such data is a vital public service that is often taken for granted.
Last edited by
Noha307 on Sun Mar 03, 2024 9:50 pm, edited 1 time in total.