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

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!

> 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...

Reminds me of https://youtu.be/1SKDvQzcasg which is quite old.

I assumed the globe was using Uber's H3 library for the hexagons.

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.

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

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!)

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.

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.

Just map your devices 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

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?)

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.

Good idea! Not sure exactly how to do this with globe.gl but I will look into it.

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!

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.

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".

Looking at your projects, seems like you still have the hacker going in you! Saw Home Assistant one! Kudos!

It is indeed! And using https://globe.gl/ for the 3D globes.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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/

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!

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!

Relatable