How to Animate a Flight Path Between Two Cities

Nothing sells a travel story faster than a plane arcing across the map from one city to the next. In Mappi, that shot takes two pins and about a minute of setup.

Set up the flight in three steps

1. Open the bottom dock, choose Route, and add your departure and arrival cities as stops in Route Builder.
2. Set the travel mode to Fly. Mappi draws a curved arc between the pins and attaches a plane icon that rides along it.
3. Adjust the per-leg duration so the flight matches your edit. Three to five seconds reads well for a single hop.

Let the camera do the storytelling

A static top-down view wastes the shot. Open Camera Director and add a follow shot so the frame tracks the plane mid-flight, then a gentle tilt as it lands. Raising the arc height slightly gives the camera more room to breathe on long hauls.

Where flight paths work best

Flight hops are the backbone of trip recaps, and the travel vlogger's guide to route map animations covers pacing them across a full video. The same two-city arc also opens a "how we met" film beautifully; the wedding videographer's guide to journey maps walks through that variant.

If the takeoff feels too mechanical, soften it with Motion Curves. One easing preset can change the whole feel of the flight.