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

Posted by jamesharding 6/27/2025

Show HN: I'm an airline pilot – I built interactive graphs/globes of my flights(jameshard.ing)

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!

1539 points | 197 commentspage 5

jpresend 6/27/2025|

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

jamesharding 6/27/2025|

Thank you! It is on my to-do list, I just need to clean up the code a little :)

jbergler 6/27/2025||

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!

jamesharding 6/27/2025|

I do actually have my GA flying included in this data, it’s 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 “7KCAB” very slowly trickling up in the cumulative time graph at the bottom.

jbergler 6/27/2025||

Oh cool, neat plane to have! And on desktop that's definitely easier to see than on mobile.

compacct27 6/27/2025||

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

Waterluvian 6/28/2025||

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.

shalev123 6/27/2025||

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

beepbooptheory 6/27/2025||

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?

mattfrommars 6/27/2025||

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 6/27/2025||

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...

jamesharding 6/27/2025||

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 6/27/2025||

And what of you failed the final examination? Could you try more than once? Would that have affected your hireability at the company?

drellybochelly 6/27/2025||

This would be pretty cool for Flight Simulator fans too!

ppak10 6/27/2025||

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 6/27/2025|

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!

HichamCh 6/29/2025|

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

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