SkyQ: daily geography game

SkyQ hands you a real scheduled flight and asks you to name both ends of it, the departure airport and the destination airport, in five guesses or fewer. There's no map to click or silhouette to squint at. Instead you work from flight metadata: how long the flight takes, what kind of plane flies it, and which direction it heads.

What is SkyQ?

SkyQ picks one real scheduled flight per difficulty level each day and challenges you to identify its departure and destination airports. You type guesses by city, country, IATA code, or ICAO code, and the game autosuggests from a database of 338 real airports. Each wrong guess unlocks the next clue in a fixed sequence: flight duration, aircraft type, whether the route is domestic or international, cardinal direction, and finally the operating airline. Those unlocking clues are what guide you toward the answer, so spending a guess is also how you buy information.

What separates SkyQ from most daily geography games is that it is built around scheduled-flight data rather than visuals. You reason from duration, equipment, and direction, and you are guessing a pair of airports rather than a single place. The routes come from real airline schedule data, and the site says it filters for routes that are actually flown. SkyQ also isn't a standalone site: it is the flagship puzzle on FlightQ, a platform of more than a dozen connected daily games with the same aviation and geography theme, including AirportQ, AirlineQ, PassportQ, CityQ, PlaneQ, and RailQ.

SkyQ runs at three difficulty levels, and a fresh Easy, Medium, and Hard puzzle goes live every day. Easy draws from the 50 busiest routes, Medium from 500 scheduled routes, and Hard from the full daily schedule, including regional and seasonal flights. The site doesn't name an individual creator or company; it is branded simply as FlightQ, with an iOS app on the App Store and a browser version you can add to your phone's home screen without an app store.

Feedback centers on streaks and stats rather than a points score. No sign-up is required, but a free account syncs your streak across devices and puts you on the leaderboards. There is a copy-paste emoji result grid for sharing, and if you miss a day you can look up yesterday's answer or browse past answers in the site's archive. New puzzles go live daily at 5 AM Eastern. Every daily puzzle is free, and an optional Premium tier only removes ads.

How to play SkyQ

Open SkyQ at flightq.app.
Pick a difficulty level: Easy, Medium, or Hard.
Enter a guess for the departure or destination airport by typing its city, country, IATA code, or ICAO code and picking from the autosuggest list.
After each wrong guess, read the clue that unlocks, in order: flight duration, aircraft type, domestic or international, direction, then airline.
Use each new clue to narrow down your next guess.
Try to name both airports within five guesses, then copy your emoji result grid to share, and come back at 5 AM Eastern for the next flight.

Tips and strategy

Use the flight-duration clue first to rule out short regional hops versus long international routes.
Pay attention to aircraft type: it can tell you whether you're looking at a regional turboprop route or a widebody international one.
The domestic-or-international clue is powerful: domestic confines both airports to one country, while international rules out every same-country pairing.
The cardinal-direction clue can eliminate a lot of candidate pairs at once, so think about which airports actually sit along that heading before spending another guess.
If you're new to the game, start on Easy mode, which draws from the 50 busiest routes, before moving up to Medium's 500 routes or Hard's full daily schedule.
Sign in before you start a streak if you want it to sync across your devices instead of resetting when you switch browsers.

Good to know

Category: Geography
Resets: Daily at 5 AM Eastern
Cost: Free; optional Premium only removes ads
Guesses: 5, to name both departure and destination airports
Modes: Easy (50 busiest routes), Medium (500 routes), Hard (full daily schedule)
Archive: Yes, yesterday's answer and past answers are browsable on the site
Feedback: Streaks and stats, copy-paste emoji result grid, leaderboards for account holders
Platform: Web at flightq.app, plus an iOS app on the App Store

SkyQ FAQ

Is SkyQ free to play?

Yes. Every daily puzzle is free, and the optional Premium tier only removes ads. You can play without an account, or sign in free to sync your streak across devices.

How do you play SkyQ?

Each day SkyQ picks a real scheduled flight. You have five guesses to identify both its departure and destination airports, entering guesses by city, country, IATA code, or ICAO code. Each wrong guess unlocks a new clue, such as flight duration or aircraft type.

Does SkyQ have an archive of past puzzles?

Yes. If you miss a day you can look up yesterday's SkyQ answer or browse past answers in the archive on flightq.app.

Is SkyQ like Wordle?

It follows Wordle's daily-puzzle, limited-guesses format, but instead of guessing letters in a word, you're guessing a pair of real airports using flight clues like duration, aircraft type, and direction.

Who made SkyQ?

The site doesn't name an individual creator or company. SkyQ is branded as part of FlightQ, a platform of more than a dozen aviation and geography daily games, which also has an iOS app.