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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 6
nelblu 6/27/2025|
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 6/27/2025||
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 6/27/2025||
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/

ta12653421 6/27/2025||
Beautiful!

Make an App out of it, sell it to your colleagues? why not?

h1fra 6/27/2025||
Cool viz, I guess it's using https://nivo.rocks/?
jamesharding 6/27/2025|
It is indeed! And using https://globe.gl/ for the 3D globes.
h1fra 6/30/2025||
Oh nice, thanks for sharing, didn't know this one
butlike 6/27/2025||
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 6/27/2025|
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!

uptownJimmy 6/27/2025||
Maaaaan, this is so cool. I'm geekin'.
3l3c7r1c 6/27/2025||
Those visualizations are really cool! Did you use any AI assisted coding? If the answer is yes, which tool(s) did you use?
jamesharding 6/27/2025|
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.
sneak 6/27/2025||
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 6/27/2025|
Haha, need to add some AI in there somehow too (no vibing used when making this)!
AJRF 6/27/2025||
Hell yeah. This is very cool, happy flying!
cosignal 6/28/2025||
Hey, are you perchance the famous 'First Officer Blunt'? Or... are you 'Captain Allears'?
Perz1val 6/27/2025|
I'm surprised that it is mostly back and forth routes. Guess they're called airlines for a reason
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