[HN Gopher] Show HN: I'm an airline pilot - I built interactive ...
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Show HN: I'm an airline pilot - I built interactive graphs/globes
of my flights
Hey HN! Pilots everywhere are required to keep a logbook of all
their flying hours, aircraft, airports, and so on. Since I track
everything digitally (some people still just use paper logbooks!),
I put together some data visualizations and a few 3D globes to show
my flying history. This globe is probably my favourite so far:
https://jameshard.ing/pilot/globes/all If you've got ideas for
other graphs or ways to show this kind of data, I'd love to hear
them!
Author : jamesharding
Score : 935 points
Date : 2025-06-27 13:06 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (jameshard.ing)
(TXT) w3m dump (jameshard.ing)
| alabhyajindal wrote:
| Very cool! I didn't know pilots are required to maintain a
| logbook. What's the official recommendation for this - using a
| paper logbook?
| jamesharding wrote:
| Each country has slightly different requirements! For the US,
| here is the FAA rule for it:
| https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-14/chapter-I/subchapter-D...
|
| A lot of people still use paper (and fill it in after landing
| each flight), but there are quite a few digital options on the
| market now. I use one called LogTen, which stores everything in
| a SQLite file behind the scenes which is what I used to make
| this.
| pinoy420 wrote:
| What happens if you lose it?
| sokoloff wrote:
| You are only required to log time required for 61.51.a.1 or
| .a.2, but are not required to log "all [your] flying hours"
| by the FAA. (Your airline might require it and it's a good
| idea to log all your flights, but it's not a law.)
| jonlucc wrote:
| This is great data visualization of interesting data! I'm curious
| about the last graph; there seems to be something making some of
| the longest flights take more time/nm. Is that real or an
| artifact, and is there an explanation for the tail?
| jamesharding wrote:
| Great question! It is not an anomaly, it is very geographically
| specific.
|
| Due the the Ukraine war (and my home base being in the UK), we
| have to fly the long way around to get to far-east destinations
| like Tokyo and Hong Kong. Flying outbound from London we have
| to fly down over Turkey (which adds about two hours of flight
| time).
|
| Flying home from Tokyo with the ongoing airspace closure, if
| the the weather is suitable at the ETOPS airports enroute, it
| is actually quicker to fly home eastbound again, flying up over
| Alaska. A proper around-the-world in 4 days!
| rob74 wrote:
| So for London-Tokyo the return route is completely different
| from the outbound route? Fascinating! I guess that has
| something to do with the jetstream (which only helps you when
| travelling eastbound)?
| arccy wrote:
| I wonder if you can spread out the airport labels a bit when
| they're clustered together, like the cluster around CYOO in the
| US.
| jamesharding wrote:
| Good idea! Not sure exactly how to do this with globe.gl but I
| will look into it.
| imp0cat wrote:
| The logbook is nice, but the split-flap display is downright
| awesome. ;)
|
| https://jameshard.ing/projects/split-flap
| jamesharding wrote:
| Glad you like it! I have a screen on there which shows my
| flights live while airborne - maybe worth a post of its own :)
| iamspoilt wrote:
| Having a computer engineering background, what motivated you to
| become a pilot and switch careers?
| iamspoilt wrote:
| Looking at your projects, seems like you still have the hacker
| going in you! Saw Home Assistant one! Kudos!
| jamesharding wrote:
| Love Home Assistant! I have a screen on my split flap display
| that shows aircraft flying overhead our house (at very high
| level) - all fed by home assistant and various HACS addons.
| jamesharding wrote:
| I had always been interested in aviation, and I was fortunate
| that I was in the right place at the right time after
| graduation to join an airline on a sponsored "cadet scheme".
|
| I still (hopefully evidently) very much love
| software/engineering, but I guess I chose the path of
| "professional pilot, hobbyist engineer" over the alternative of
| "professional engineer, hobbyist pilot".
| joshvm wrote:
| I'm surprised how wide the acceptance age range is for BA's
| program (18-55). Is it common for people to transfer from
| unrelated careers? Nice to know that door isn't technically
| shut for a while!
| avgDev wrote:
| I loved programming before doing it as a job. Now, I really
| can't be bothered to program outside of work.
|
| At what age did you make this change?
|
| I love medicine, researching diseases I hear about and
| learning about the body is hobby for me. I would love to get
| into it but I am almost 40.
| svara wrote:
| > I would love to get into it but I am almost 40.
|
| You're young! Saying that as a fellow almost-40.
| phkahler wrote:
| >> chose the path of "professional pilot, hobbyist engineer"
| over the alternative of "professional engineer, hobbyist
| pilot"
|
| Both pay well for a job, but as a hobby the costs are very
| different ;-)
| uptownJimmy wrote:
| Maaaaan, this is so cool. I'm geekin'.
| andreygrehov wrote:
| This is great work! I have a somewhat off-topic question. How are
| your ears? Do pilots have any tricks to save their ears from
| getting clogged due to the constant pressure changes?
|
| Second question. Would it be possible to predict flight delays
| based on the number of inbound and outbound flights?
| jamesharding wrote:
| Thank you :) I haven't had issue with my ears (other than the
| occasional lingering cold), but usually a good yawn or chewing
| gum will clear it. On a normal day, I am fortunate to have wide
| eustacian tubes I guess!
| lbotos wrote:
| Not a pilot but fly frequently -- A lot of the modern larger
| planes 787 Dreamliner or an A330/350 have something that helps
| with the ear clogging.
|
| I travel NY/LON a lot, and I rarely have any ear popping. If I
| travel on a smaller plane say NY -> Miami, I easily get the
| clogged feeling.
| netsharc wrote:
| The newer planes pressurize their cabin to a lower simulated
| altitude.
|
| https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/1728/does-
| the-b...
| nelblu wrote:
| Love it :-). Do you also need to log the gps co-ordinates as you
| are flying? I would love to see how you avoid the airspace in the
| war hit areas.
| netsharc wrote:
| Not OP, but commercial airliners fly on airways:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwaYDVbQvKI& , from waypoint to
| waypoint.
|
| When there's missiles in the air heading to land on innocent
| babies, the airlines choose waypoints so that they don't fly
| over these areas.
| jamesharding wrote:
| I wish I had it! Our flight plans contain the full routes
| (waypoints and airways), but there is no easy way to capture
| this information.
|
| While not exact prohibited airspace, this map shows where GPS
| jamming is highest, which roughly corresponds to the warzones:
| https://gpsjam.org/
| ok_computer wrote:
| Cool visualization for your personal logbook. How is the raw or
| display data stored?
|
| The globe map reminds me of this hexagonal grid article from my
| bookmarks I'd found on here or reddit.
|
| https://www.redblobgames.com/grids/hexagons/
|
| As an airline pilot, I am curious, have you watched the season 2
| of Nathan Fielder's Rehearsal on HBO, that comically addresses
| the topic of pilot-copilot communication?
|
| If so what are your thoughts on his portrayal of the existence of
| copilot communication friction. And without intending to dig into
| your personal business, do you think there is a tendency and
| survivor (retention) bias for the profession to remain high
| functioning ______, without recognizing a need for help. Or is
| this portrayal of stunted coworker dialog an edge case that is
| amplified from his perspective.
| wetoastfood wrote:
| > How is the raw or display data stored?
|
| He answered in the post that he uses LogTen Pro[1] which
| enables querying with SQL[2]. In the SQL post he says the app
| has an export for CSV but the app stores it in SQLite which you
| can access and query from directly.
|
| [1] https://logten.com/ [2]
| https://jameshard.ing/posts/querying-logten-pilot-logbook-sq...
| jamesharding wrote:
| The data is all in a sqlite file from my logbook software! I
| wrote a little post about extracting the data here:
| https://jameshard.ing/posts/querying-logten-pilot-logbook-sq...
|
| I have only seen a few clips from The Rehersal (the bit with
| Sully listening to Evanescence), so I don't have much to go on.
| Pilot communication is definitely something that we spend a lot
| of time talking about and training (under the larger banner of
| CRM - crew resource management), and in my experience the
| industry is making real efforts to be better in this area!
| ok_computer wrote:
| Cool, thank you for the response and details.
| im_down_w_otp wrote:
| Hey! I used to work for the company that makes that logbook
| software. That was a great job. The CEO was an amateur pilot
| himself and really, really loved software product design.
|
| It's been over a decade, but it's cool to see that software
| still being iterated on and pilots still loving it.
|
| Even cooler to see someone such as yourself extending its
| usefulness by leveraging the data. Cheers!
| jamesharding wrote:
| Awesome!
|
| You can tell that the software is created by people
| passionate about aviation (and also passionate about nice
| UX, something that most all of the Logten competitors
| really lack). Do you remember if my guess about using
| NSDate internally was correct?
| im_down_w_otp wrote:
| "passionate about aviation" and "passionate about nice
| UX" definitely described Noah and the rest of the team!
|
| Honestly, I don't remember Re: NSDate. It was many jobs
| and Dante's levels of burnout ago. :-)
|
| What I remember from that time was a lot of fighting with
| Apple's early iCloud syncing. Because it had a habit of
| being incredibly fraught and flakey using SQLite-backed
| Core Data stuff.
| bombcar wrote:
| Reminds me of https://youtu.be/1SKDvQzcasg which is quite old.
| fastball wrote:
| I assumed the globe was using Uber's H3 library for the
| hexagons.
| AJRF wrote:
| Hell yeah. This is very cool, happy flying!
| Chico75 wrote:
| I'm curious to know what is the small concentrated cluster of
| flights Northwest of Dulles airport, where the flight durations
| seem way too high compared to the effective distance between the
| points.
| jamesharding wrote:
| Those are all of my flights in light aircraft around my
| hometown in Canada! They fly a little bit slower than the A350
| :) There is a similar cluster around the south of Spain where I
| completed my Commercial/ATPL training.
| mkoubaa wrote:
| Are you allowed to code while sitting in the cockpit but not
| actively flying?
| jamesharding wrote:
| On the long flights where we carry more than two pilots, we
| have allocated break time away from the cockpit. During those
| breaks, you can do whatever you like (sleep, watch a film, read
| a book, etc). I tend to try to sleep on the plane, but I always
| bring my laptop on trips to work on projects while downroute.
| Especially on west-coast trips with the 8 hours timezone
| change, I am usually awake at 2am which is great for being
| productive!
| walthamstow wrote:
| I am insanely productive when programming on flights without
| wifi, provided I've cached what I needed to beforehand.
| Something about it just works
| amelius wrote:
| Ok, so no high-quality LLMs possible.
| bschwindHN wrote:
| I'm jealous - all that time sitting around to get something
| productive done, and I can't concentrate at all because I
| can't relax, the plane suddenly shakes and distracts me,
| and it feels like I'm lacking oxygen and am not thinking
| clearly. I remember trying to code some stupid iterator
| thing in Rust for a few hours and couldn't crack it. On the
| ground it was solved in like 10 minutes.
| baroquetaxers0s wrote:
| this is cool
| jcsnv wrote:
| this is so cool!
| butlike wrote:
| Those few days that show back-to-back 14hr days must have been an
| experience :)
|
| What's your favorite thing to see up in the sky and in the
| clouds?
| jamesharding wrote:
| The 14 hour days certainly felt long!
|
| I think that seeing the northern lights (quite common on our
| flights to west-coast North America) or large thunderstorms
| over the equator at night (from a safe distance) are probably
| the highlights for me :) SpaceX launches are becoming more
| regular occurrences too!
| jasonthorsness wrote:
| I love the sequential globe especially!
|
| For an idea - anything you could do with altitude? Your average
| height above sea level per day? I dunno :p
| NKosmatos wrote:
| I'll second this idea. Keeping track of your hours on high
| altitude is important sine you get more radiation than us on
| the ground. I've read various articles about pilots & flight
| attendants health affected by higher exposure to radiation.
| willsmith72 wrote:
| True, but is it counterbalanced by their ageing at least a
| few microseconds more slowly thanks to spending so much time
| closer to the speed of light?
| cyberax wrote:
| You actually age faster on an airplane, because you are in
| a less dense space and experience less gravitational
| redshift.
|
| General relativity works against the Special Relativity in
| this case.
| willsmith72 wrote:
| Well shucks to my high school physics teacher
| jamesharding wrote:
| I wish I had the data! Likewise, collecting the number of
| passengers carried would be a nice cumulative statistic at the
| end of my career (I guess I can start recording this when I
| become a Captain?)
| FL410 wrote:
| You could (probably) pull the ADSB data for a
| "representative" flight on given routes and use that to at
| least get close - probably would still be useful for things
| like radiation exposure mentioned elsewhere.
|
| Otherwise, maybe you can get Claude to vibe code you a mobile
| app that runs in the background and collects all the
| interesting data (GPS, cabin alt, etc)
| collinvandyck76 wrote:
| This is inspiring me to collect more of my own data -- great job!
| dylan604 wrote:
| Just map your device's location services. It'll be telling just
| how much someone that gained access to your device could tell
| about you. Or how much theGoog is making from knowing that data
| compacct27 wrote:
| Oh my god, love these visuals. Geo data is so perfect for dataviz
| the_arun wrote:
| Folks like you (expert in multiple domains) are an inspiration
| for people like me. I always dream to do something other than my
| day job. Hope I push through my laziness to do it some day !
| jamesharding wrote:
| What a kind comment :) Thank you!
| ProZsolt wrote:
| Sometimes I wish software development didn't pay so
| exceptionally well. I'm interested in so many other things, but
| it's hard to justify switching to another full-time field,
| knowing it would mean a significant pay cut.
| DC-3 wrote:
| My heart bleeds.
| bronco21016 wrote:
| Depending on your locale and position, you may have it
| backwards. Check out pilot pay in the United States at
| www.airlinepilotcentral.com
| nimish wrote:
| I wish I wasn't medically barred from having a pilot's
| license. Not for the pay, but I just like the idea of
| flying. Unfortunately, I cannot. I recommend people use
| their salaries to learn how to fly regardless! It's maybe
| ~$15-20k to get a PPL which is doable for the tech crowd
| with some planning.
| 3l3c7r1c wrote:
| Those visualizations are really cool! Did you use any AI assisted
| coding? If the answer is yes, which tool(s) did you use?
| jamesharding wrote:
| Thank you! This was all by hand using Astro, but I have steated
| experimenting with using AI coding for my newest project
| (https://liberateloyalty.com/). I have just been using ChatGPT
| and Copilot so far, and I am totally sold on their helpfulness.
| amelius wrote:
| You could turn this into a product!
|
| Something pilots can link to from their LinkedIn accounts.
|
| And of course to impress friends and family.
| h1fra wrote:
| Cool viz, I guess it's using https://nivo.rocks/?
| jamesharding wrote:
| It is indeed! And using https://globe.gl/ for the 3D globes.
| cetinsert wrote:
| See https://RTEdge.net too, if you like globes with interactive
| nodes and edges!
| supportengineer wrote:
| Here I am having accomplished apparently nothing in my life.
| uncleDingle wrote:
| Relatable
| gavmor wrote:
| Your handle is "supportengineer". Presumably you outrank OP if
| you count assists, or a share of others' successes.
|
| Do the developers of the libraries he used count this site as a
| personal accomplishment? Do the airplane mechanics? Do their
| support engineers?
|
| We participate in a circulatory economy, but we haven't yet
| adopted a perspective of circulatory attribution. Maybe we
| never will. Maybe we never should.
|
| Maybe you should recognize your piecemeal contributions as a
| sort of _ikigai_ , or maybe you should see this as a wakeup
| call to _carpe diem._
|
| Thanks for the opportunity to pontificate!
| weinzierl wrote:
| That is beautiful. Besides the globe and the cool animations I
| like the dashboard that shows summary stats.
|
| This made me think. Either Frauenhofer or Helmholtz in Germany
| used to have a site where you could enter your specific flights
| and it would tell you your overall radiation exposure. This was
| meant mainly for flight personnel and it was not nearly as
| beautiful. The accumulated exposure would be a useful addition
| for the dashboard.
| jamesharding wrote:
| A great idea!
|
| The company that I work for does actually provide us with our
| cumulative dosage data for the month/year/lifetime, but not at
| such a granular level. Do you know of any statistical way that
| I could calculate this?
|
| I suppose I could work out the great circle routes and the
| approximate dosage in that airspace at a given time?
| mcflubbins wrote:
| Nomadlist had (has?) radiation exposure for all of your trips
| too, I was shocked when I saw the stats!
| 18172828286177 wrote:
| Being a professional pilot while also being able to put together
| such a polished software project like this is incredibly
| impressive
| shawabawa3 wrote:
| do pilots get to mess around on a laptop while flying? My
| understanding is that most of a flight is just sitting there
| waiting for landing to start, could mean a lot of spare time to
| pick up programming
| mbreese wrote:
| I don't think the cognitive context switching required would
| be a good fit. I imagine pilots always have to be "on" just
| in case something happens, even if they are letting the plane
| do some of the routine flying.
| Mawr wrote:
| Sure:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwest_Airlines_Flight_188
| (video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzmeGS29nu8)
| Rendello wrote:
| When you're 8 hours deep in borrow checker hell, you're in no
| emotional state to be piloting the A380.
| kunley wrote:
| Or the contrary: nothing can shake you anymore
| barbazoo wrote:
| It's not a 9-5 for many and time between flights can be
| significant. Not surprised they do that as a hobby on the side.
| Not imagining they're doing anything during the flight.
| perks_12 wrote:
| He graduated from UofT with a major in CompSci.
| david422 wrote:
| Looks great, thanks for sharing! One thing I love about software
| engineering is that you can apply it to so many different aspects
| of ordinary life. Showing your flight career like this is really
| cool.
| jamesharding wrote:
| It is so true! This XKCD comic always comes to mind though with
| projects like this: https://xkcd.com/1205/
| silasdavis wrote:
| There seems to be some crossover between the software and flying
| 'communities'. Perhaps this is rather unsurprising given some of
| the shared prerequisite skills? Is it your experience there are
| many commercial pilots who code?
|
| Do you expect to get 100% of the way to the sun over your career?
| jamesharding wrote:
| There are quite a few ex-engineers who fly (though anecdotally,
| most seemed to have studied aerospace engineering. At this
| rate, I think I am on track to make it about 10% of the way
| there by the time I retire (unless supersonic travel comes back
| in a large way!)
| ortusdux wrote:
| Very cool! Can you share any info on the 945min flight from back
| in June?
| jamesharding wrote:
| Thank you!
|
| That flight was the return from Tokyo (RJTT) to London (EGLL).
| Due to the closure of Russian airspace, the outbound flight is
| longer than pre-war as we fly over Turkish airspace. Due to the
| wind patterns, it is almost always longer flying westbound, so
| we usually fly east both ways.
|
| In this case, the weather at one of the ETOPS alternates that
| we use (Shemya,
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eareckson_Air_Station) was out of
| limits, so we had to fly back Westbound with the associated
| headwind and longer flight time.
| vdddv wrote:
| A lot of data and none on his carbon footprint
| Tepix wrote:
| my thoughts as well
| trizoza wrote:
| Love the destination matrix graph!
| zX41ZdbW wrote:
| I have a similar visualization on top of ~150 billion data points
| of ADS-B data: https://adsb.exposed/
|
| It is interactive, so you can filter by any dimension, like the
| types of aircraft you fly.
|
| It is 2D, but I thought about making it 3D as well.
|
| PS. The map you showed is somewhat slow - when I zoom in, the
| framerate is less than 10.
| Perz1val wrote:
| I'm surprised that it is mostly back and forth routes. Guess
| they're called airlines for a reason
| halilkoklu wrote:
| Inspiring profile with beautiful charts.
|
| Glad to have found someone else with a similar background who
| decided to fly jets.
|
| I had a good run as a software engineer and executive for the
| last 20 years. I have just completed my Airbus 320 type rating
| waiting for my base check. I will be flying for a national flag
| carrier.
| jamesharding wrote:
| Congratulations, and thank you!
|
| I moved from the A320 to the A350 just over two years ago, and
| they are remarkably similar to fly (by design)! I would go so
| far as saying that you could hop in the A350 sim with zero
| training, and you would be able to operate it to a safe
| standard.
| halilkoklu wrote:
| I've got my eyes on the A350 for ages now so I'm glad that I
| landed on the Airbus fleet (80/20 odds in favour of Boeing
| here at my airline).
|
| I've got two possible progression tracks from here: 1. gain
| experience on the A320 for a year, get upgraded to the A330,
| after two years get certified for the A350 to fly A330/A350
| mixed. 2. spend years on A320, upgrade to captain, many more
| years, then finally upgrade to A330 as captain, then two
| years later A350 added.
|
| I am planning to fly jump seat to see all the types we're
| flying.
| jamesharding wrote:
| May I ask which airline you fly for? Feel free to email me
| if you like (email is on the website!) if you'd rather not
| post it in public :)
|
| Career progression in airlines is interesting - with
| lifestyle being so heavily influenced by seniority at most
| airlines, there is often a big tradeoff decision to make
| between lifestyle and salary.
|
| At my current airline, the most well-trodden career
| progression has historically always been Short-haul FO ->
| Long-haul FO -> Short-haul Captain -> Long-haul Captain.
| Curious if this is the same at other airlines?
| maxehmookau wrote:
| This is super cool, although perhaps the coolest thing is that
| this website is part of a WEBRING!
| ppak10 wrote:
| Cool, the data visualization is really neat! Do you have a lot of
| down time during those long flights and are you able to work on
| this during that time?
| jamesharding wrote:
| Thank you! Not so much during the flight, but I bring my laptop
| on most trips, and I use some of the 24-48 hours we get between
| flights to try to be productive. It helps when I am awake at
| 2AM (PST) when it is 10AM on my body clock!
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| I'm flying your most recent route next month(ba218). If I see you
| I'm going to say something weird, like "I know where you've been
| flying James". I hope that's okay.
|
| Regarding ideas, I noticed that you use great circle distance in
| some of your measurements, what about getting the actual flight
| data, and the graph showing deviation of your flight from the
| ideal.
| jamesharding wrote:
| Haha, if there is another James flying the plane, they might be
| spooked! I'm not flying to Denver for until at least August
| based on my current roster.
|
| It would be great to use the actual distances (and would help
| me lap the moon a few more times), but there is no easy way to
| get the data. Our company flight plans which contain the actual
| route are in PDF format and with no easy API, and EuroControl
| (who hold the filed flight plans) charge quite a bit to have
| access I believe. I supposed I could screenshot the route and
| upload it to my server and have it OCR the route!
| ziofill wrote:
| How did you make the world not pick up a geometric phase as you
| move it around? It's always oriented nicely.
| jamesharding wrote:
| The https://github.com/vasturiano/globe.gl library seems to use
| this as the default
| crsv wrote:
| This is just fun and fantastic. Love it.
| mattfrommars wrote:
| If I understand OP journey, was he fortunate to have been
| scholarship to fund his studies to become a pilot?
|
| I was looking into pilot school here and they cost upwards to
| $100k
| jamesharding wrote:
| Exactly this. When I joined, the company offered a cadet scheme
| where the company would underwrite the loan required for your
| pilot training (84,000 GBP in 2016), and then that amount was
| repaid to us over 84 months of employment (while on a reduced
| cadet salary). It essentially spread the cost of training out
| over 7 years.
|
| The current cadet scheme is better in the sense that you do not
| have to take on a personal loan for the flight training!
| darkwater wrote:
| And what of you failed the final examination? Could you try
| more than once? Would that have affected your hireability at
| the company?
| vmh1928 wrote:
| Air Cadets appears to be a part of the Canadian Armed Forces
| and intended to provide an on-ramp for young people interested
| in different aspects of the Armed Forces (Army, flying, Naval.)
|
| https://www.canada.ca/en/department-national-defence/service...
|
| Qualifications to join the Air Cadets.
| https://www.canada.ca/en/department-national-defence/service...
| Peterpanzeri wrote:
| Damn this is soo cool im not even close to understrand all of it
| but its damn beautiful
| kunley wrote:
| Very cool visualisation project!
|
| As for your flying, I just wanted to tell you good luck, we're
| all counting on you
| beepbooptheory wrote:
| Love this work. Is this something you can share with your partner
| in the cockpit often? Would you say you are more of a First
| Officer Blunt, or a Captain Allears?
| ta12653421 wrote:
| Beautiful!
|
| Make an App out of it, sell it to your colleagues? why not?
| jpresend wrote:
| This is amazing, James! Any chance you'd release it open source?
| jamesharding wrote:
| Thank you! It is on my to-do list, I just need to clean up the
| code a little :)
| sneak wrote:
| Code, data visualizations, aviation, mapping.
|
| All you need to do is throw in some Rust and a custom PCB or two
| and you have an HN bingo. :)
|
| Sweet hack.
| jamesharding wrote:
| Haha, need to add some AI in there somehow too (no vibing used
| when making this)!
| undebuggable wrote:
| My IT career is rather nowhere, my glider training terminated
| before going solo, at least have equally cool domain. Good to
| know someone is succeeding overall in all these, haha.
| Entertaining post and engaging data presentation!
| voxleone wrote:
| Very cool. I just wanted to say how much I enjoyed reading
| through your detailed flight logs -- the way you've documented
| your experience, from distances and time in the air to the
| nuances of roles (P1, P2, PICUS), was fascinating.
|
| As someone concerned with these matters -- developing SpinStep, a
| quaternion-based library for modeling orientation and vector
| state evolution in physical systems -- I found myself
| unexpectedly inspired by your data. It got me thinking: could
| these kinds of spatiotemporal logs, with their emphasis on
| direction, roles, and environmental influences, be approached
| through something like rotational state modeling?
|
| For example:
|
| .Aircraft headings and orientation changes could map naturally to
| quaternions.
|
| .Role transitions (e.g. P1 - P2) resemble discrete state changes
| within a continuous system.
|
| .Wind effects or flight network patterns might even be modeled as
| external fields influencing orientation over time.
|
| I hadn't envisioned SpinStep in this context, but your log
| offered a compelling perspective. Whether or not it leads to
| something concrete, I just wanted to thank you for the
| inspiration.
|
| .https://github.com/VoxleOne/SpinStep/blob/main/README.md \
|
| .https://github.com/VoxleOne/SpinStep/blob/main/docs/01-ratio...
| jampekka wrote:
| The repo reads a bit LLM written.
|
| Quaternions have some nice properties for some operations with
| 3D rotations, but they are not a panacea.
| jakub_g wrote:
| If you're interested in the subject, let me introduce you to
| GCMap.
|
| GCMap can plot a line between any two IATA airport codes;
| actually you can put arbitrary number of pairs comma separated;
| and best of all, they can be passed as a URL param. For example:
| `JFK-LHR,LHR-CDG,CDG-FRA`
|
| http://www.gcmap.com/mapui?P=JFK-LHR,LHR-CDG,CDG-FRA
|
| I track my own flights by sending an email to myself with a GCMap
| URL every now and then.
| kccqzy wrote:
| GCMap doesn't have a whole lot of different map projections to
| choose from. Having more than one pair on a single map will
| result in a pretty bad map projection. That's my biggest
| complaint. They really need to add more better projections such
| as Mollweide, Winkel Tripel, Robinson, etc. Or they should just
| have a globe.
| piker wrote:
| So cool! I assumed that pilots just generally flew the same hops
| back and forth over and over, but it seems at first glance that
| there is actually a lot of variety.
|
| Does it make you nervous when you have to land in a new place for
| the first time?
| jamesharding wrote:
| I guess the variety of flights is based on which aircraft one
| flies! I flew the A320 for the first 6 years, which covered all
| of Europe and a little bit of North Africa (Egypt, Lebanon,
| Jordan). Now flying the A350, there is more of the world
| unlocked, but there are still some routes that only other
| aircraft (777/787/A380) fly at my company.
|
| We have comprehensive company data for each airport that we
| operate to, and some of the more challenging airports have
| special training (in the simulator) as a requirement, or a
| video briefing. Nervous would be the wrong word, but it is
| always exciting to fly somewhere new!
| HeavenFox wrote:
| Very cool! As a semi-frequent flyer I am also passionate about
| logging every flight I have taken. I have been using OpenFlights
| for the last five years but the constant bugs always bugged me :)
| This year I finally decided to build my own:
| https://jetsetter.quest
| poly2it wrote:
| Very interesting visualisations! I'm surprised but at the same
| time not surprised at the apparent overlap between pilots and
| programmers.
|
| Do you have a favourite/least favourite plane to fly, or are they
| all the same?
| jamesharding wrote:
| Slightly biased, but right now I am really enjoying the A350!
|
| There are a few "gadgets" that really improve the QoL for
| pilots (moving map on the ground, camera in the tail for
| taxiing on the ground, much improved safety systems for
| situations like blocked pitot tubes, etc).
| aitacobell wrote:
| Super cool. Harkens back to days of Microsoft Flight Simulator
| b0a04gl wrote:
| when a route doesn't come back as a roundtrip , like you fly LHR
| > HKG but not the return . how does that usually get handled on
| your end? do you deadhead back, get reassigned regionally or wait
| out a layover cycle?
| jamesharding wrote:
| Good question! There are a few routes in my data where the
| outbound and inbound sectors don't match for this exact reason.
| Since almost all of our flights begin and end at LHR, if a
| flight is cancelled we either operate the flight the following
| day, or fet "positioned" (our word for deadhead) home as a
| passenger.
|
| Usually when a route changes aircraft, there is a requirement
| to "position" some pilots out a few days before as passengers
| to bring the aircraft home when it lands there for the first
| time. Logistically, very complex!
| intalentive wrote:
| Cool. It would be neat to see velocity and altitude too.
| aquafox wrote:
| I would plot the destination matrix as a jeatap where each row is
| a departure and each column an arrival and color is the number of
| trips. Additionally, you could cluster the rows and columns of
| this heatmap.
| joemi wrote:
| Nice metrics and visualizations! The kind of graph you used for
| the destination matrix doesn't always feel very useful, but in
| this case it worked really well.
|
| One thing I immediately thought to check after seeing your hours
| graph was what percentage of the year you were in flight (or in a
| plane, I guess). For your peak year (2024), it worked out to be
| about 8.7% of the year! It probably even higher if you just count
| your waking hours, but I don't know your sleep habits or how many
| of your flights you might have slept during.
| jamesharding wrote:
| You did the math! Thank you :)
|
| It is one of the pecularities of the job, in that I will be "at
| work" for 4 days, but only actually strapped into an airplane
| for 8-14 hours at the beginning and end of that - the rest is
| mandated (and much needed) resting.
| schubart wrote:
| Do all your flights start or end in London?
| jamesharding wrote:
| Almost all, but not quite all!
|
| For example, about 6 months ago, I operated the following trip
| pattern:
|
| LHR -> GIG -> EZE -> GIG -> LHR
|
| The Rio to Buenos Aires and back "shuttle" flight was a day of
| flying on its own, with 24 hours rest afterwards before flying
| back to London.
| frenchman_in_ny wrote:
| Very cool. One nit is because of the graph smoothing, it looks
| like you have negative hours P2 time 2014-2015 and Heavy time
| 2021-2022.
|
| I thought the ICAO "Heavy" designation applied to aircraft above
| a certain MTOW instead of time? Wouldn't the time designation be
| as acting as relief captain/FO?
|
| In any case, great visualizations.
| jamesharding wrote:
| The term "Heavy" (for wake separation) in the ICAO context is
| 100% based on MTOW! In the context of this graph, these are
| flights where we carry 3 or 4 pilots, and I am not in the seat
| for takeoff or landing. We still operate at the control during
| the middle of the flight when the other pilots are on their
| rest break. Not sure where the name "Heavy" came from here, but
| is it just the term used at my airline (and probably others?
| Some use "relief crew")
|
| Good call on the data smoothing - I will look into a fix for
| this!
| drellybochelly wrote:
| This would be pretty cool for Flight Simulator fans too!
| malteeez wrote:
| Awesome data and perspective!
|
| Do you have any takes on the performance and quality of ATC
| systems across your most frequent routes? Have you noticed any
| patterns in terms of delays, communication efficiency and
| related..
| sandspar wrote:
| How cool! At the end of the movie "Braveheart", the narrator
| describes his fellows as "warrior poets" - basically the ideal
| Scottish man. I think that "design-literate pilot" is a
| reasonable modern version of at least one ideal type of person to
| be. Congratulations!
| qq66 wrote:
| What did you use to build the globes?
| jamesharding wrote:
| globe.gl and a little bit of Flask/Python to wrangle the data
| shalev123 wrote:
| That's fascinating! Have you thought about sharing your data
| visualization methods with other pilots? It could help improve
| safety communication and training.
| dkga wrote:
| Fascinating!
| kinow wrote:
| Amazing visualization. Any plans to add more features to each
| log? e.g. difficulty of taking-off/flying to/landing, or
| trajectory with/out turbulence, etc.?
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