Savvy Navigator posted on August 07, 2009 11:53
Fair warning and full-disclosure notice here: This one’s for the airline geeks…
For those of you who know me well, you know that I’ve been a lifelong, passionate aficionado and fan of commercial aviation. Those close to me affectionately refer to me as the airline über-geek.
Imagine my extreme pleasure when I discovered the Flight Memory website a while ago. Flight Memory is designed specifically for my geek brethren and me, and allows us to input or upload our flight data into their online database. The website provides a repository for our flight statistics, as well as the ability to generate very, very cool maps.
Here’s how it worked for me: I have an Excel file where I keep all of my flight log data. Every time I fly, I capture the basic flight information, including the aircraft registration (aka the tail number) in my database. I’ve been keeping this database since my 20s. It comes in handy when I want to see if I’ve previously flown on a particular plane, or, more importantly, when there’s an incident.
For example, when Captain Sully put N106US into the Hudson River earlier this year, I was able to query the database and see that I’d flown twice on this particular aircraft, twice in 2001 on the USAirways Shuttle between DCA and LGA. But I digress….
After creating my Flight Memory account, I shipped off the database to the website guys, paid my low fee, and they uploaded everything into my account. Ince it was all uploaded, I had to do some manual adjusting of the data, but the bottom line is that I now have some very, very cool statistics and the ability to generate maps. With this data, I also can order some beautiful posters and with the premium membership, I have the ability to really play with the data and generate even cooler maps.
Here’s what my Stats Overview page looks like:
Here’s a visual representation of my domestic flying:
And, lastly, here’s my international personal route map:
Go take a look at Flight Memory’s website, and if you’re like me, you’ll have yet another cool tool to facilitate procrastination.