Two lists of places to fly to
Airport and city visits gave flying a record of where you have been. What they didn't give was a reason to go somewhere new. Most of us fly over our own city, then over the airport next to it, and stop there. So we made two lists of famous places and put them on their own pages at /lists.
The busiest airports in the world has 50 airports, ranked by passengers in 2025. The figures come from ACI World, the airports' own trade body, and every page links to the source. Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta is first and São Paulo/Guarulhos is fiftieth. An airport counts as visited in the usual way: two minutes in the air around the field, below 500 metres above it.
The biggest cities in the world has 100 cities, ranked by population as Natural Earth gives it. That is the same city data the flight world is built from, so every city on the list is one you can fly over. Tokyo is first, then New York and Mexico City. A city counts after three minutes in the air inside its boundary.
Parts and rewards
Each list is split into three parts. For the airports they are the top 10, the top 25 and the whole 50. For the cities they are the top 10, the top 50 and the whole 100. Order doesn't matter, and neither does the day: every place you visit counts towards every part it belongs to.
- Finish the first part: 5 Tridents.
- Finish the second: 15 Tridents and a title (Hub Hopper for airports, Metropolitan for cities).
- Finish the whole list: 30 Tridents, a title (Air Atlas or Big City Flyer) and a profile frame glow.
Tridents count towards your prestige stars. The titles and frames can't be bought in the Exchange, only earned here.
What the pages show
Every place has a link that puts you in the air above it. When you are signed in, the places you have already visited get a tick, each part shows how far along you are, and one checkbox hides everything you have done so only the remaining places are left. Each place also shows how many pilots have visited it. No names appear on these pages: the lists only count.
Why lists that don't change
Rankings change every year. If the list moved under you, a part you finished last spring could stop being finished. So each list is a fixed edition with its year in the name. When the 2026 airport figures come out, they will be a new list with new achievements, and the 2025 one will stay exactly as it is.
The visits you have already made count straight away. A tally runs every hour, so if you visited Frankfurt or Istanbul last week, they are already ticked.
Update, 17 October
The lists now show up where you already look at a place. An airport page says where it ranks, with a link to its part of the list. So does the airport card on the map, and your own airports page has a filter and a sort for the places that are on the list. City pages for the hundred biggest cities say their rank too. There is also a new weekly mission: visit two places from the lists in a week. Repeat days count, so flying over your own city twice is enough if it is on the list.