How to Bring a Google Maps Location into Helipaddy

Pilots often get sent locations in whatever format is quickest.

A hotel sends a Google Maps pin. A friend drops a marker. Someone texts a location for lunch, an event, or a pickup point.

That works well enough for sharing a place once. It is not a great long-term place to keep aviation-useful landing locations.

If a place is worth keeping, Helipaddy is usually the better home for it.

Why move it out of Google Maps?

Google Maps is useful for sending locations, but it quickly becomes messy if you start using it as your personal store of landing places.

Before long, it is full of:

• restaurants
• hotels
• home and work addresses
• random dropped pins
• places you looked at once and forgot about

Helipaddy is different. It is a purpose-built place to store locations that matter to pilots.

Once a location is in Helipaddy, it becomes easier to:

• keep it alongside other landing locations instead of general-life map clutter
• recognise if it already exists as a Helipaddy site
• favourite it for later
• find it again in /me
• export and share it into tools such as SkyDemon, Garmin avionics, and ForeFlight
• export favourites later as GPX

That makes Helipaddy a much better long-term workflow than leaving everything buried in Google Maps.

The simplest workflow

• Open the location in Google Maps.
• Expand the location details if needed.
• Tap the Plus Code to copy it.
• Open Helipaddy and paste the code into search.
• Tap the + button to add it.

That is it.

Step 1: Start in Google Maps

In Google Maps, start with the location you want to keep.

For a dropped pin or unnamed location, expand the address/details row and Google Maps will show a Plus Code.

In the example below, the location shows the Plus Code 6H87+2X5 Dorking, United Kingdom.

Step 2: Paste the Plus Code into Helipaddy

Open Helipaddy and tap the search bar.

Paste the Plus Code exactly as copied from Google Maps. In this case, that means including the place context, not just the short code on its own.

Helipaddy search will resolve it as a place result.

Step 3: Let Helipaddy centre the map

Tap the search result and Helipaddy will centre the map on the matching location.

At this point, you have moved from a generic Google Maps marker into the Helipaddy workflow.

You are now looking at the area inside the app, with the normal Helipaddy map controls available and the + button ready for adding the location.

Step 4: Tap + to add it

Tap the + button and Helipaddy opens the add-location flow with the coordinates and address already filled.

That is the key handoff point: Google Maps helped you share the place. Helipaddy helps you keep it.

Why this is useful for pilots

This matters because plenty of good helicopter destinations first arrive as shared map locations rather than ready-made aviation waypoints.

A few common examples:

• a hotel you want to revisit
• a lunch stop another pilot sends over
• an estate, event venue, or golf club
• a temporary pickup point
• a landing location you want to save for a future trip

If you leave those in Google Maps, they tend to disappear into the general noise of everyday map use.

If you move them into Helipaddy, they become part of a pilot-focused system instead:

• they are easier to recognise later
• they can be favourited
• they show up conveniently in /me
• they can be exported into broader flight-planning workflows

That is the real value.

A better place to keep the places that matter

Google Maps is excellent for sharing a location quickly.

Helipaddy is the better place to keep that location if it is somewhere you may actually want to fly to again, share with another pilot, favourite, or export into your navigation workflow later.

So next time someone sends you a location in Google Maps, do not just leave it there.

Copy the Plus Code, paste it into Helipaddy, and add it properly.

If you already use favourites, you can then find it again in /me. If you are new to the platform, you can also browse more pilot app features or register as a pilot.