jamesharding

It is so true! This XKCD comic always comes to mind though with projects like this: https://xkcd.com/1205/

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!

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.

The https://github.com/vasturiano/globe.gl library seems to use this as the default

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?

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!

What a kind comment :) Thank you!

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?

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.

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!)

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.

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/

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

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!

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?)

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!

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!

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 :) 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!

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".

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

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!

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.

Gaining access to the normally-locked flight deck jump seat seems like a pretty big potential flight safety threat to me.

"Line up and wait" is indeed correct!

https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/publications/atpubs/aim_html...

What an enjoyable read. I am just going through the process of a house purchase in the UK now (in rural Berkshire), and the presence of "Newt Control Officers" in any council planning permission documents did make me laugh, so this article was well timed :)

The view out the side window is pretty good for straight ahead! It is more on the corner than the side of the flight deck, so it can be used to see straight ahead if needed. Here is the view out of this side window: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vyRVyNO-nYo

The engines in the MAX are still producing thrust below the centre of mass of the plane...how would this produce a nose down pitch at TOGA thrust?

If the remote ground-based pilot has the capability to take total control authority of the aircraft (which, after the GermanWings incident would seem to be a necessity), then the security implications are massive. Imagine a remote-control attack on an aircraft carrying 800+ passengers...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93U.S._RQ-170_incid...