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There are various services that use world-wide Boeing Winds for forecast wind data which can be used to calculate an approximate flight time between two locations. They usually have best case, worst case, and average case for each location, altitude, and date in the future.

I have searched and searched Google to no avail. Where can this wind data be found, and how can it be used in a commercial product?

For those of you who don't know what the Boeing winds are, I found this description of their software product on am informal message board (not related to Boeing):

PC WindTemp 

INTRODUCTION 
The Boeing PC Windtemp program provides global average and statistical winds and temperatures aloft over a 30 year period. These data are used primarily for comparative transport airplane performance and economic studies. The data may also be used for transport airplane route planning on an annual, seasonal, or monthly basis. 

Note: Actual winds and temperatures at a specific location and time may differ appreciably from those computed by PC Windtemp. Therefore, data from PC Windtemp must not be used for flight planning, aircraft dispatch, airborne flight navigation, or any other type of actual flight operations. 

PROGRAM FEATURES 
A seasonal and monthly database with global coverage from 1000 millibars (364 feet pressure altitude) to 10 millibars (101,885 feet pressure altitude). Annual data updates to the most recent 30 year period. Airport codes and coordinates may be imported from a text file in a comma separated value (CSV) format Calculates enroute wind and temperature for up to 50 airport pairs at a time. Calculates enroute wind and temperature for simple great circle tracks or tracks with up to 250 waypoints, with or without altitude changes. Calculates average enroute wind and temperature or any reliability (quantile) between 50% and 99%. Months or seasons, reliabilities, altitudes, and speeds may be nested for input efficiency. Formatted and text output reports are available. Program subroutines (DLLs) can be called from other programs written with C++ or Visual Basic in order to incorporate Windtemp functionality in those programs.

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    $\begingroup$ Are you asking about getting Boeing's data specifically, or are you asking where someone can get equivalent data, even from another source? $\endgroup$
    – Pondlife
    Jan 21, 2014 at 14:31
  • $\begingroup$ @Pondlife Either would be good, but I am still curious about Boeing! $\endgroup$
    – Lnafziger
    Jan 21, 2014 at 14:47

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An alternative to the Boeing data (if it exists, you might need to call one of their sales reps to find it) is publicly available meteorological data. One such project is the NCEP/NCAR Reanalysis Project. There are a few others, as well as archived data. None of these is exactly the Boeing dataset, but I'd bet that the Boeing dataset is based at least in part upon data like these. The benefit to the data below is that in most cases it is free and there is a lot of it.

Reanalysis Data

Reanalysis data is constructed from the best available past observations, which are assimilated into a weather model to fill in the gaps between obs and in time. There are many such projects with various scales (global, regional) and time periods.

The NCEP/NCAR Reanalysis Project

This dataset has 4-times-daily, daily and monthly values between 1948 and present and long term monthly means for 1981-2010. The data is global. The data is publicly available and you can retrieve files in NetCDF format from the linked website. The wind data is stored on pressure levels (e.g. 1000 mb, 500 mb, 250 mb) and is stored in its u (east-west) and v (north-south) components separately.

The ERA40

This dataset is a global dataset covering 1957-2002 and has various output resolutions available. Output from ECMWF is typically in the GRIB format and not all of it is free for non-research use.

The NARR

The North American Regional Reanalysis, as the name suggests, is a regional dataset covering North America. The data covers 1979 - present.

Observations

Long term past observations are archived at the NCDC and include surface stations, weather balloons and model data, among others. From the various models available a statistical representation of winds could feasibly be produced.

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The wind data that Jeppesen/Boeing uses is proprietary, they have their own meteorologists.

Similar data is available from NOAA. They have a data server that can provide wind information.

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  • $\begingroup$ Does the NOAA also provide historic data, or only current data? $\endgroup$
    – Qantas 94 Heavy
    Jan 21, 2014 at 10:13
  • $\begingroup$ Thank you, but I am not looking for current data like NOAA offers. $\endgroup$
    – Lnafziger
    Jan 21, 2014 at 13:30
  • $\begingroup$ NOAA historcal data is here: ncdc.noaa.gov $\endgroup$
    – Jim In Texas
    Jan 23, 2014 at 1:34
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Usually inside the dispatch document, you will have a list with all enroute fixes, like this:

FIX    FREQ     AWY   WIND    COORDS
---------------------------------------  
VKZ    123.45   UN857 235/60º W... S...

Usually airlines have their own system to deal with that, but search about lufthansa's LIDO, they can provide this information for you, click here to understand a little bit more.

And as said by Jim, all data is provided by NOAA via winds aloft charts, you can find it here, section "Wind and Temperature".

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  • $\begingroup$ Thank you, but I am not looking for current data like NIAA offers. $\endgroup$
    – Lnafziger
    Jan 21, 2014 at 13:31

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