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Life & fun · June 27, 2025

IM

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

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!

I'm an airline pilot – I built interactive graphs/globes of my flights launched on June 27, 2025 with 1,539 votes, #1 of 7,999 launches that month and more than 99% of that year's launches. The site was still online in September 2026, 1 year on.

Visit jameshard.ing ↗Alternativestop 1% of June 2025

In plain words

This project transforms pilot logbook data into interactive visualizations and 3D globes showing flying hours, aircraft types, and airport locations. Built by a commercial airline pilot who digitizes records instead of using traditional paper logbooks, it provides pilots with a dynamic way to explore and display their flight history. The tool is designed for pilots who want to visualize their accumulated flying experience geographically and chronologically.

written from the facts on this page · September 2026

From the sources

Since 2023, I have been a First Officer on the Airbus A350 with British Airways operating out of London Heathrow. Prior to this, I flew the Airbus A320 family based at Heathrow and Gatwick since 2016. I joined British Airways through their cadet scheme in 2014, which included an Integrated ATPL course that I completed at FTEJerez in Andalucia, Spain 🇪🇸. My flying journey began in Canada 🇨🇦, where I obtained my Glider Pilot License, Instructor Rating, and my PPL through Canadian Air Cadet scholarships. I log all of my flights digitally using LogTen Pro , which lets me query them using SQL and present them in infographic format. My favourite is the GitHub-style flying history. Before we…from jameshard.ing

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