Typing "Mumbai" into FlightSide's search has always found Mumbai, and "London" has always found London. What used to trip people up was everything just next to that: the older name a city still goes by, and the shorthand for a metro area that covers more than one airport.
Airports the way you think of them
Search now understands two more things: the older or common name a city still goes by, and the metro code people use instead of picking a specific airport.
Flying between Mumbai and London (see the route) is a good example. Typing "Bombay", the name plenty of travelers still use, used to come up empty even though the city itself has always been searchable by its current name. And getting to London meant already knowing which of its five airports to search for. Now "Bombay" finds Mumbai directly, and "LON" surfaces Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted, Luton, and City together, without forcing that choice up front.
Metro codes work the same way for other multi-airport cities. Type "STO" for a Stockholm to Copenhagen trip (see the route) and all four Stockholm-area airports show up under one search.
Lighter, not lower quality
The map itself got a lot lighter without losing detail. Data that was being downloaded but never rendered on screen is gone, so there is less to fetch before the map draws in, at the same visual quality as before. The rest of the page loads faster too. On a typical mobile connection, something useful now shows up almost immediately instead of leaving you waiting a second or two.
If you have installed FlightSide as an app, the difference shows up before the app even opens: the first download is meaningfully lighter, so it does not cost as much data to get onto a phone.
When there is no flight yet
Not every visit starts with a booking. Sometimes it is curiosity about what the tool does, or a few minutes free before a meeting, and typing in a real route feels like more effort than it is worth.
Hit "Feeling lucky!" on the homepage, or "Random route" in the footer from anywhere on the site, and FlightSide puts together a plausible flight: two real airports and a daylight departure time somewhere in the next year.
There is no flight schedule behind the pick, so it is not claiming that exact flight exists. The airport pairing is still sensible, though. A small regional airport gets matched with a real hub it could realistically reach, rather than another small airport on the other side of the planet. The departure time is always in daylight, so there is actually a sun side to recommend. You might get actually lucky!
Try it
Open FlightSide with no flight in mind and hit "Feeling lucky!" on the homepage. See what pairing comes back, and whether the recommended side matches what feels right for the route.