I fly AA 153 (the return flight 154) a lot. The route for today is : BAE J89 DLH J538 VBI YQD LIDON NCA20
ELLAM NODLE R220 NANAC OTR10 ARIES
ARIESN
How do I decode or figure out the route? Sorry to ask such a newbie question. I searched the forum and found 10 pages, but couldn’t find an answer!
Thanks in advance! Trish 
I am sure a pilot type person 
will correct me if I’m wrong, but the way to read aa flight plan like that is a point i.e BAE connected by a route i.e. J89 to another point (Waypoint) to another route… “J” routes are the high alt. routes used by a/c above FL180 ( 
right) R220 is a route within Japans air route structure the last ARIES ARIESN is the STAR Standard Arrival for lemmie guess you’re going to NRT?!? ARIES is the first point the a/c will begin to execute the app. to NRT. OK all you pilot type guys…how did I do???
NeedleNose gave this little nugget out in another thread, I think it is a very cool site:
You can paste that entire route into the flight plan box on the mentioned skyvector.com website and it will plot the route and decode the waypoints for you.
Trish,
Normally there is a word “decode” below the route. See flightaware.com/live/flight/SWA1006 as an example. Click on Decode and you will get something like the below
KSAN Origin Airport 32.7335556 -117.1896667
PGY VOR-TAC (NAVAID) 32.6103333 -116.9790833
BROWS Reporting Point 32.6311111 -116.7699167
IPL VOR-TAC (NAVAID) 32.7488611 -115.5085833
IPL VOR-TAC (NAVAID) 32.7488625 -115.5085783
BZA VOR-TAC (NAVAID) 32.7681289 -114.6028403
My gut instinct sez that since your flight in question is an international flight, that decode option is not available.
Does this work for international flights? It seems to stop at LIDON for me.
COOL feature as this is the first I have read of this.
Alan, I remember what you had written…but did not see that ability for the mentioned flight…cool feature on FA. Magnetoz, tks for that 411 as well…like I said that is a cool site 8)
Yep.
Thanks for all the replies…ya, I am going to Narita. My hub is Japanese and we travel there routinely for business. 
Heck, even if I can see the non-international part that would still be great. I have noticed that our path varies depending on the month, which I would guess is weather/jet stream related. Interesting too, some months we leave at around 11am and then other months it’s around 1pm. It’s all become fascinating to me! I don’t bother looking at our flight from MKE to ORD…too short! Really, thanks again to everyone, this sight has really allowed me to overcome my fear of flying and has made me want to learn more.
Let me reach deep in your desires and put a subliminal thought at Be a Pilot
hehehe 
I have thought about it. There is a school at KUES Waukesha and one in Watertown Wi as well. Of course as I own a show horse, the hub says it’s one or the other! Darn, I love that horse!
Good guess, and you’d be correct. Airlines will adjust their routings to avoid weather when possible, and to take advantage of the wind for best efficiency.
As for a route decoding, the shorthand can be confusing to a non aviator. There are three letter navaid identifiers that by name may or may not have a connection to their geographical location. The airways themselves like J89, J583, and R220 are somewhat meaningless unless you are looking at them on a chart. And waypoints like LIDON, ELLAM, NANAC, etc. which are points in space on an aeronautical chart, and in navigation databases, all for the purpose of getting from point A to point B. It’s all very interesting stuff, but it also can be rather mundane when you’re plotting your progress.
If you can get one of the flight crew members to give you an expired chart it’ll have the bulk of the info neccessary for you to follow along as you watch the moving map flight progress on the IFE system. 
This the same question I just posted on another thread, and here’s the answer, sort of. SkyVector appears to do the basics of what I wanted – converting route waypoints into GPS coordinates – and within the US, it plots them over the charts also. The interface was a bit clunky for me, particularly when it requires switching to another sectional. (Might be my Mac, which has been a bit ill lately.)
Outside the US, it basically gave up on plotting – nothing past Duluth (I could drag the map along until the next waypoint, but there were no charts underneath it.) The last waypoint I got GPS for was NANAC, i.e. one or two short of the end.
So I wonder if that means SkyVector’s database is not quite comprehensive?
No, I believe Sky Vector was only designed for domestic maps and waypoints.
The interface is cumbersome, but it’s exactly like the sectionals in the paper form. I am just surprised they haven’t “stitched them together” but then again, the file sizes on the sectionals are huge so maybe it’s more for a bandwidth consideration.
It is possible to stitch Skyvector charts together yourself. I used Windows Live Photo Gallery and Snipping Tool (a Windows Vista program located on the accessories menu).
Here’s the steps I used
Save the displayed chart using Snipping Tool (when you right click on the chart a location information rather than the usual right click menu appears).
Repeat step 1 for each additional area. Make sure you have an overlap between each section. Be sure to keep the chart at the same zoom as step 1.
When you have saved all of the areas you want, start Windows Live Photo Gallery.
Click on Extras then pick Create Image Composite.
Select the areas you saved in steps 1 and 2
Stitch the areas together.
The resulting stitched together chart appears to be seamlessly stitched. I used a combination of SFO and LAS charts. There may be other adjacent charts that do not have enough overlap to do this.
Remember the chart you stitch together should not be used for navigation!
The VFR charts come from the FAA as geo-referenced TIFFs, which should be easier to stitch together; about $25 for a one time set of the lower 48.
Yes, I have had those charts on my Christmas list for a couple of years now:
http://naco.faa.gov/ecomp/Catalog.aspx?a=AERO+NOS+DIGITAL+DRC
$13.25 each for AK, eastern and western contiguous US (one time). I don’t need a subscription, but they go for $172.25 each (13 months?).
I was more interested in a lookup table – international waypoint names to GPS coords. Then if I want I can place markers in Google Earth, by hand or by making a KML file.