HN Reader

Show HN: I'm an airline pilot – I built interactive graphs/globes of my flights

1509

196

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!

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.

3 days agoby ok_computer

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...

3 days agoby voxleone

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 !

3 days agoby the_arun

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.

3 days agoby weinzierl

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.

3 days agoby zX41ZdbW

I love what you've done with your logbook, but the coolest part of the page was the photo of you on the flight deck with your Dad.

I'm an airline pilot here in the US and it would be the privilege of a lifetime to be able to do that with one of my kids.

2 days agoby inoffensivename

Being a professional pilot while also being able to put together such a polished software project like this is incredibly impressive

3 days agoby 18172828286177

You should add time dilation to your list of statistics! You’re probably around 5 microseconds younger than someone who stayed in Earth!

3 days agoby ccorcos

The logbook is nice, but the split-flap display is downright awesome. ;)

https://jameshard.ing/projects/split-flap

3 days agoby imp0cat

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.

3 days agoby jakub_g

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.

3 days agoby joemi

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.

3 days agoby david422

You could turn this into a product!

Something pilots can link to from their LinkedIn accounts.

And of course to impress friends and family.

3 days agoby amelius

This is awesome and I love it. Thanks for sharing! I'm just wondering what made you wanna be a pilot instead of sticking with a regular software engineering career, especially since you’ve got a degree in that and, of course, your talent here :)

3 days agoby Crier1002

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.

3 days agoby halilkoklu

Very cool! I didn't know pilots are required to maintain a logbook. What's the official recommendation for this - using a paper logbook?

3 days agoby alabhyajindal

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.

3 days agoby arccy

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?

3 days agoby silasdavis

Should add the amount of CO2 emissions per flight since you know the model of plane(s). And if you have occupancy data for each flight, can even determine efficiency.

3 days agoby xyst

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.?

3 days agoby kinow

Impressive and very cool! You might consider making this into a globe route generator that folks will pay for. See https://anim8map.com/

As an active airline passenger for the past 50 years, I wish I’d kept a log my many hundreds of flights. Some day I’ll sit down and attempt an educated guess.

2 days agoby ljsocal

This is inspiring me to collect more of my own data -- great job!

3 days agoby collinvandyck76

If you want something similar for yourself personally, I've found Flighty on iOS to be amazing https://apps.apple.com/us/app/flighty-live-flight-tracker/id...

2 days agoby ngoel36

See https://RTEdge.net too, if you like globes with interactive nodes and edges!

3 days agoby cetinsert

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.

3 days agoby IncreasePosts

That's a super cool way to visualize your career! Did you use a specific mapping library or build something custom?

1 day agoby HichamCh

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

3 days agoby HeavenFox

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.

3 days agoby frenchman_in_ny

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

3 days agoby jasonthorsness

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!

3 days agoby sandspar

How did you make the world not pick up a geometric phase as you move it around? It's always oriented nicely.

3 days agoby ziofill

Noticed the last logged flight is KDEN>EGLL. I do that KDEN<>EGLL route many times per year, sometimes multiple per month. I wonder if I’m ever on a flight with James :) Will have to listen out!

2 days agoby simonjgreen

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?

3 days agoby andreygrehov

This is super cool, although perhaps the coolest thing is that this website is part of a WEBRING!

3 days agoby maxehmookau

Having a computer engineering background, what motivated you to become a pilot and switch careers?

3 days agoby iamspoilt

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?

3 days agoby jonlucc

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?

3 days agoby piker

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!

3 days agoby undebuggable

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.

3 days agoby aquafox

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..

3 days agoby malteeez

Very neat, something that would be cool to see is the commercial vs GA split over time. In your graph by type it’s quite hard to see how much flying you still do on your own time!

3 days agoby jbergler

Fun thing I can’t stop poking at: if you go to a globe view, zoom out a little, drag to focus on a pole, then pinch to zoom, you go for an absolutely wild ride.

3 days agoby Waterluvian

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.

3 days agoby Chico75

This is amazing, James! Any chance you'd release it open source?

3 days agoby jpresend

That's fascinating! Have you thought about sharing your data visualization methods with other pilots? It could help improve safety communication and training.

3 days agoby shalev123

Oh my god, love these visuals. Geo data is so perfect for dataviz