OpenFlights

News from OpenFlights, the site for flight logging, mapping, stats and sharing

Author Archives: jpatokal


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Interesting uses of OpenFlights

OpenFlights was originally created as a personal flight mapper, so you can record your own flights and share them with the world.  However, our inventive users have come up with some entirely different things to do with the site, and I’d like to share a few of them today.

Planning get-togethers

Over at FlyerTalk, the frequent-flyer website extraordinaire, there are dozens of “Dos”, or get-togethers, in cities all over the world every year.  These involve people flying in from cities all over the world for a weekend or so, all on different days and different flights, and then dispersing the same way.  How to find out who else is coming from the same direction, on what flights and when?  For the fourth Continental Do (Feb 6-7, Houston, Texas), sbm12 had a brilliant idea: let every participant list their own flights on OpenFlights under CODoIV.  Want to figure out who’s coming in from Philadelphia?  One click and you’ll find out.  The same idea would work nicely for conferences, weddings or any other larger event, private or public, and as plans change, everybody can change their own flights, with no need for a central coordinator.

Showcasing your airport

Texas is famously big, and the Office of the Governor wanted to show visitors just how many international connections its airports have.  What better way to show this than mapping them on OpenFlights as DFW_International?

Mapping an airline

Given the care lavished on flight maps in inflight magazines, it’s surprising how bad the online route maps of most airlines are.   One way to address this is to create a profile on OpenFlights, like GAflight‘s listing of all Garuda Indonesia routes, past and present.

Any other fun or useful ways to use OpenFlights?  Let us know.

Keep on flying,
-jani


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Public launch of OpenFlights

After some six months of development and testing, we’re delighted to today announce the official launch of OpenFlights, the site that lets you map your flights around the world, search, filter and categorize them in all sorts of interesting ways, calculate statistics automatically, and share the resulting maps with friends and the world — if you want to.  A quick recap of some of our main features:

  • OpenFlights has a dynamic map. You can pan, zoom, select, scroll and explore all you like!
  • OpenFlights is user-friendly and efficient. Everything’s on the same page!
  • OpenFlights makes searching really easy. Point and click!
  • OpenFlights has a powerful filter. Three clicks, and your map will show only Singapore Airlines flights in business class in 2007.
  • OpenFlights works in realtime. Make any change, and you’ll see it right then and there.
  • OpenFlights supports “trips” (read more). You can join up any flights together into a trip, which you can then display on its own page and even share with friends.
  • OpenFlights is free in spirit. We don’t try to lock you in: it’s easy to import your data and export copies for safekeeping.
  • OpenFlights is free software. All our source code and (public) data is licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License and can be downloaded from SourceForge, so you can set up your own copy or just use the bits you like.
  • OpenFlights can be used anywhere. No need to install any programs, synchronize data or take care of backups, just point your browser to the site.

Gold EliteToday also marks the introduction of our Elite Level system, in which those users who have contributed to the site, either through beta-testing, publicity or donations, receive stars on their profile and access to a few extra perks like password-protected private profiles and opting out of advertising.  On the other side, those users who have either entered over 100 flights or set their profiles as private, meaning that they are not visible to the outside world, will start getting reminders to consider contributing.  However, all core functionality in OpenFlights is and will remain free to all.

This is by no means the end of new development for OpenFlights, there are plenty of feature requests already waiting for us to get back to work.  Your feedback on what you’d like to see next is very welcome!

Keep on flying,
-jani