_______ __ _______
| | |.---.-..----.| |--..-----..----. | | |.-----..--.--.--..-----.
| || _ || __|| < | -__|| _| | || -__|| | | ||__ --|
|___|___||___._||____||__|__||_____||__| |__|____||_____||________||_____|
on Gopher (inofficial)
URI Visit Hacker News on the Web
COMMENT PAGE FOR:
URI Show HN: I'm an airline pilot â I built interactive graphs/globes of my flights
a3w wrote 2 hours 42 min ago:
Why are airline pilots considered cool, while bus drivers are essential
infrastructure, but do basically the same job â getting people from A
to B?
lostdog wrote 2 hours 38 min ago:
Put me behind the wheel of a bus and I'm pretty sure I could get it
somewhere safely.
jbergler wrote 2 hours 59 min ago:
Very neat, something that would be cool to see is the commercial vs GA
split over time. In your graph by type itâs quite hard to see how
much flying you still do on your own time!
jamesharding wrote 2 hours 38 min ago:
I do actually have my GA flying included in this data, itâs just
pretty minimal these days! GA flying is very expensive in the UK.
I still fly our family airplane when I am home in Canada, but it only
amounts to a few hours a year. You can see the flight time for
â7KCABâ very slowly trickling up in the cumulative time graph at
the bottom.
jbergler wrote 2 hours 25 min ago:
Oh cool, neat plane to have!
And on desktop that's definitely easier to see than on mobile.
drpizzamd wrote 3 hours 0 min ago:
just out of sick curiosity...something about flights with ill-behaved
fliers. Ultimately, as one who does not work in the airline business
and has flown often, how often are pilots and staff perturbed by
customers?
kinow wrote 3 hours 35 min ago:
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.?
jamesharding wrote 2 hours 32 min ago:
Thank you! I have text comments/remarks for all particularly
memorable flights (for all of the above reasons you mentioned, plus
famous passengers, family on board, etc), but some of those are quite
private and also difficult to show in a visualisation like this.
I would love to track more data over time, but balancing that with it
being easy to collect is the challenge!
pcollins123 wrote 2 hours 3 min ago:
You could summarize that data using some form of machine learning.
A good new skill to develop. Then you donât need to share the
exact details, just a count per category. E.g. personal incident
(32), late take off duty to X (23), passenger medical incident
(15). Hopefully in aggregate form that data is less of a privacy
issue and less of a commercial risk for your company.
dkga wrote 4 hours 10 min ago:
Fascinating!
shalev123 wrote 4 hours 21 min ago:
That's fascinating! Have you thought about sharing your data
visualization methods with other pilots? It could help improve safety
communication and training.
qq66 wrote 4 hours 55 min ago:
What did you use to build the globes?
jamesharding wrote 4 hours 43 min ago:
globe.gl and a little bit of Flask/Python to wrangle the data
sandspar wrote 4 hours 56 min ago:
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!
malteeez wrote 5 hours 27 min ago:
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..
drellybochelly wrote 6 hours 23 min ago:
This would be pretty cool for Flight Simulator fans too!
frenchman_in_ny wrote 6 hours 52 min ago:
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 6 hours 13 min ago:
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!
schubart wrote 7 hours 0 min ago:
Do all your flights start or end in London?
jamesharding wrote 5 hours 50 min ago:
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.
joemi wrote 7 hours 2 min ago:
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 6 hours 16 min ago:
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.
aquafox wrote 7 hours 6 min ago:
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.
intalentive wrote 7 hours 14 min ago:
Cool. It would be neat to see velocity and altitude too.
b0a04gl wrote 7 hours 17 min ago:
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 5 hours 53 min ago:
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!
aitacobell wrote 7 hours 25 min ago:
Super cool. Harkens back to days of Microsoft Flight Simulator
poly2it wrote 7 hours 42 min ago:
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 5 hours 47 min ago:
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).
HeavenFox wrote 7 hours 46 min ago:
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:
URI [1]: https://jetsetter.quest
piker wrote 7 hours 50 min ago:
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 6 hours 8 min ago:
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!
jakub_g wrote 8 hours 9 min ago:
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` [1] I track my own flights by sending an
email to myself with a GCMap URL every now and then.
URI [1]: http://www.gcmap.com/mapui?P=JFK-LHR,LHR-CDG,CDG-FRA
kccqzy wrote 7 hours 35 min ago:
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.
voxleone wrote 8 hours 11 min ago:
Very cool. I just wanted to say how much I enjoyed reading through your
detailed flight logs â the way youâve 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 â developing SpinStep, a
quaternion-based library for modeling orientation and vector state
evolution in physical systems â 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 â 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 hadnât 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.
. [1] \
.
URI [1]: https://github.com/VoxleOne/SpinStep/blob/main/README.md
URI [2]: https://github.com/VoxleOne/SpinStep/blob/main/docs/01-rationa...
jampekka wrote 4 hours 38 min ago:
The repo reads a bit LLM written.
Quaternions have some nice properties for some operations with 3D
rotations, but they are not a panacea.
undebuggable wrote 8 hours 12 min ago:
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!
sneak wrote 8 hours 24 min ago:
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 4 hours 34 min ago:
Haha, need to add some AI in there somehow too (no vibing used when
making this)!
jpresend wrote 8 hours 35 min ago:
This is amazing, James! Any chance you'd release it open source?
jamesharding wrote 4 hours 37 min ago:
Thank you! It is on my to-do list, I just need to clean up the code a
little :)
ta12653421 wrote 8 hours 51 min ago:
Beautiful!
Make an App out of it, sell it to your colleagues? why not?
beepbooptheory wrote 8 hours 58 min ago:
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?
kunley wrote 8 hours 58 min ago:
Very cool visualisation project!
As for your flying, I just wanted to tell you good luck, we're all
counting on you
Peterpanzeri wrote 9 hours 1 min ago:
Damn this is soo cool
im not even close to understrand all of it but its damn beautiful
mattfrommars wrote 9 hours 4 min ago:
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
vmh1928 wrote 8 hours 51 min ago:
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.) [1]
Qualifications to join the Air Cadets.
URI [1]: https://www.canada.ca/en/department-national-defence/service...
URI [2]: https://www.canada.ca/en/department-national-defence/service...
jamesharding wrote 8 hours 52 min ago:
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 8 hours 26 min ago:
And what of you failed the final examination? Could you try more
than once? Would that have affected your hireability at the
company?
crsv wrote 9 hours 7 min ago:
This is just fun and fantastic. Love it.
ziofill wrote 9 hours 23 min ago:
How did you make the world not pick up a geometric phase as you move it
around? It's always oriented nicely.
jamesharding wrote 9 hours 7 min ago:
The [1] library seems to use this as the default
URI [1]: https://github.com/vasturiano/globe.gl
IncreasePosts wrote 9 hours 46 min ago:
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 9 hours 0 min ago:
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!
ppak10 wrote 9 hours 49 min ago:
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 9 hours 28 min ago:
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!
maxehmookau wrote 10 hours 12 min ago:
This is super cool, although perhaps the coolest thing is that this
website is part of a WEBRING!
halilkoklu wrote 10 hours 39 min ago:
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 10 hours 23 min ago:
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 8 hours 42 min ago:
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 5 hours 57 min ago:
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?
Perz1val wrote 10 hours 49 min ago:
I'm surprised that it is mostly back and forth routes. Guess they're
called airlines for a reason
zX41ZdbW wrote 10 hours 52 min ago:
I have a similar visualization on top of ~150 billion data points of
ADS-B data: [1] 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.
URI [1]: https://adsb.exposed/
leeoniya wrote 1 hour 54 min ago:
wow, that's some serious data crunching.
can you share some tech details?
trizoza wrote 10 hours 58 min ago:
Love the destination matrix graph!
vdddv wrote 10 hours 58 min ago:
A lot of data and none on his carbon footprint
Tepix wrote 7 hours 10 min ago:
my thoughts as well
ortusdux wrote 11 hours 2 min ago:
Very cool! Can you share any info on the 945min flight from back in
June?
jamesharding wrote 10 hours 52 min ago:
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, [1] ) was out of limits, so we had to fly back Westbound
with the associated headwind and longer flight time.
URI [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eareckson_Air_Station
silasdavis wrote 11 hours 9 min ago:
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 10 hours 42 min ago:
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!)
david422 wrote 11 hours 14 min ago:
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 8 hours 56 min ago:
It is so true! This XKCD comic always comes to mind though with
projects like this:
URI [1]: https://xkcd.com/1205/
18172828286177 wrote 11 hours 14 min ago:
Being a professional pilot while also being able to put together such a
polished software project like this is incredibly impressive
perks_12 wrote 9 hours 31 min ago:
He graduated from UofT with a major in CompSci.
barbazoo wrote 10 hours 50 min ago:
Itâs 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 theyâre doing anything during the flight.
shawabawa3 wrote 10 hours 57 min ago:
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
Rendello wrote 9 hours 46 min ago:
When you're 8 hours deep in borrow checker hell, you're in no
emotional state to be piloting the A380.
kunley wrote 8 hours 56 min ago:
Or the contrary: nothing can shake you anymore
Mawr wrote 9 hours 51 min ago:
Sure: [1] (video: [2] )
URI [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwest_Airlines_Flight_18...
URI [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzmeGS29nu8
mbreese wrote 10 hours 50 min ago:
I donât think the cognitive context switching required would be a
good fit. I imagine pilots always have to be âonâ just in case
something happens, even if they are letting the plane do some of
the routine flying.
weinzierl wrote 11 hours 18 min ago:
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.
mcflubbins wrote 6 hours 39 min ago:
Nomadlist had (has?) radiation exposure for all of your trips too, I
was shocked when I saw the stats!
jamesharding wrote 9 hours 31 min ago:
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?
supportengineer wrote 11 hours 24 min ago:
Here I am having accomplished apparently nothing in my life.
gavmor wrote 9 hours 59 min ago:
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!
uncleDingle wrote 11 hours 21 min ago:
Relatable
cetinsert wrote 11 hours 27 min ago:
See [1] too, if you like globes with interactive nodes and edges!
URI [1]: https://RTEdge.net
h1fra wrote 11 hours 29 min ago:
Cool viz, I guess it's using [1] ?
URI [1]: https://nivo.rocks/
jamesharding wrote 11 hours 20 min ago:
It is indeed! And using [1] for the 3D globes.
URI [1]: https://globe.gl/
amelius wrote 11 hours 35 min ago:
You could turn this into a product!
Something pilots can link to from their LinkedIn accounts.
And of course to impress friends and family.
3l3c7r1c wrote 11 hours 41 min ago:
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 11 hours 32 min ago:
Thank you! This was all by hand using Astro, but I have steated
experimenting with using AI coding for my newest project ( [1] ). I
have just been using ChatGPT and Copilot so far, and I am totally
sold on their helpfulness.
URI [1]: https://liberateloyalty.com/
the_arun wrote 11 hours 42 min ago:
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 !
ProZsolt wrote 7 hours 5 min ago:
Sometimes I wish software development didnât pay so exceptionally
well. Iâm interested in so many other things, but itâs hard to
justify switching to another full-time field, knowing it would mean a
significant pay cut.
bronco21016 wrote 6 hours 2 min ago:
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 5 hours 52 min ago:
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.
DC-3 wrote 6 hours 52 min ago:
My heart bleeds.
jamesharding wrote 9 hours 30 min ago:
What a kind comment :) Thank you!
compacct27 wrote 11 hours 44 min ago:
Oh my god, love these visuals. Geo data is so perfect for dataviz
collinvandyck76 wrote 12 hours 3 min ago:
This is inspiring me to collect more of my own data -- great job!
dylan604 wrote 10 hours 2 min ago:
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
jasonthorsness wrote 12 hours 13 min ago:
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
jamesharding wrote 11 hours 48 min ago:
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 11 hours 36 min ago:
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)
NKosmatos wrote 11 hours 59 min ago:
Iâll second this idea. Keeping track of your hours on high altitude
is important sine you get more radiation than us on the ground.
Iâve read various articles about pilots & flight attendants health
affected by higher exposure to radiation.
willsmith72 wrote 11 hours 55 min ago:
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 11 hours 39 min ago:
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 9 hours 13 min ago:
Well shucks to my high school physics teacher
butlike wrote 12 hours 13 min ago:
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 11 hours 39 min ago:
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!
jcsnv wrote 12 hours 19 min ago:
this is so cool!
baroquetaxers0s wrote 12 hours 23 min ago:
this is cool
mkoubaa wrote 12 hours 23 min ago:
Are you allowed to code while sitting in the cockpit but not actively
flying?
jamesharding wrote 12 hours 7 min ago:
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 12 hours 0 min ago:
I am insanely productive when programming on flights without wifi,
provided I've cached what I needed to beforehand. Something about
it just works
bschwindHN wrote 10 hours 6 min ago:
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.
amelius wrote 11 hours 33 min ago:
Ok, so no high-quality LLMs possible.
Chico75 wrote 12 hours 25 min ago:
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 12 hours 12 min ago:
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.
AJRF wrote 12 hours 25 min ago:
Hell yeah. This is very cool, happy flying!
ok_computer wrote 12 hours 25 min ago:
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 Iâd found on here or reddit. [1] As an airline pilot, I am
curious, have you watched the season 2 of Nathan Fielderâs 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.
URI [1]: https://www.redblobgames.com/grids/hexagons/
fastball wrote 11 hours 1 min ago:
I assumed the globe was using Uber's H3 library for the hexagons.
bombcar wrote 11 hours 50 min ago:
Reminds me of [1] which is quite old.
URI [1]: https://youtu.be/1SKDvQzcasg
jamesharding wrote 11 hours 54 min ago:
The data is all in a sqlite file from my logbook software! I wrote a
little post about extracting the data here: [1] 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!
URI [1]: https://jameshard.ing/posts/querying-logten-pilot-logbook-sq...
im_down_w_otp wrote 10 hours 10 min ago:
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 9 hours 10 min ago:
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 3 hours 35 min ago:
"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.
ok_computer wrote 11 hours 25 min ago:
Cool, thank you for the response and details.
wetoastfood wrote 11 hours 55 min ago:
> 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]
URI [1]: https://logten.com/
URI [2]: https://jameshard.ing/posts/querying-logten-pilot-logbook-sq...
nelblu wrote 12 hours 26 min ago:
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.
jamesharding wrote 11 hours 14 min ago:
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:
URI [1]: https://gpsjam.org/
netsharc wrote 11 hours 15 min ago:
Not OP, but commercial airliners fly on airways: [1] , 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.
URI [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwaYDVbQvKI&
andreygrehov wrote 12 hours 28 min ago:
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?
lbotos wrote 11 hours 52 min ago:
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 11 hours 27 min ago:
The newer planes pressurize their cabin to a lower simulated
altitude.
URI [1]: https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/1728/does-the...
jamesharding wrote 12 hours 16 min ago:
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!
uptownJimmy wrote 12 hours 29 min ago:
Maaaaan, this is so cool. I'm geekin'.
iamspoilt wrote 12 hours 34 min ago:
Having a computer engineering background, what motivated you to become
a pilot and switch careers?
jamesharding wrote 12 hours 29 min ago:
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".
phkahler wrote 8 hours 55 min ago:
>> 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 ;-)
avgDev wrote 11 hours 29 min ago:
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 10 hours 42 min ago:
> I would love to get into it but I am almost 40.
You're young! Saying that as a fellow almost-40.
joshvm wrote 12 hours 12 min ago:
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!
iamspoilt wrote 12 hours 32 min ago:
Looking at your projects, seems like you still have the hacker going
in you! Saw Home Assistant one! Kudos!
jamesharding wrote 9 hours 4 min ago:
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.
imp0cat wrote 12 hours 37 min ago:
The logbook is nice, but the split-flap display is downright awesome.
;)
URI [1]: https://jameshard.ing/projects/split-flap
jamesharding wrote 5 hours 46 min ago:
Glad you like it! I have a screen on there which shows my flights
live while airborne - maybe worth a post of its own :)
arccy wrote 12 hours 43 min ago:
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 12 hours 36 min ago:
Good idea! Not sure exactly how to do this with globe.gl but I will
look into it.
jonlucc wrote 12 hours 45 min ago:
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 12 hours 38 min ago:
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 11 hours 58 min ago:
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)?
alabhyajindal wrote 12 hours 48 min ago:
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 12 hours 43 min ago:
Each country has slightly different requirements! For the US, here is
the FAA rule for it: [1] 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.
URI [1]: https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-14/chapter-I/subchapter-D...
sokoloff wrote 12 hours 32 min ago:
You are only required to log time required for 61.51.a.1 or .a.2,
but are not required to log âall [your] flying hoursâ by the
FAA. (Your airline might require it and itâs a good idea to log
all your flights, but itâs not a law.)
pinoy420 wrote 12 hours 39 min ago:
What happens if you lose it?
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