7 ms·

Show HN: Flight Times Sliced, Diced and Visualized (side project)

69 points by nikhizzle 12y ago

bargl 12y ago
The only thing I think is missing here boarding times for the different carriers. I was reading somewhere (I can't find the link) that southwest has the best method right now. I did find a link to another site that seems to have similar content but doesn't mention Southwests boarding style (because it isn't random it is based on least resistance boarding). http://menkes76.com/projects/boarding/boarding.htm http://menkes76.com/projects/boarding/boarding.htm Edit: Note Dewey found the right article below.
- nikhizzle 12y ago
  Very cool, maybe I will implement the simulator when I have a chance.
- dewey 12y ago
  This could be the article you are looking for: http://www.vox.com/2014/4/25/5647696/the-way-we-board-airplanes-makes-absolutely-no-sense http://www.vox.com/2014/4/25/5647696/the-way-we-board-airpla... Discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7649026 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7649026
  - personlurking 12y ago
    And Mythbusters Boarding segment here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERt7EhX-gtE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERt7EhX-gtE
- smackfu 12y ago
  I'd argue that boarding times are generally irrelevant, despite being annoying. If you walk up to the gate a minute before they close it, you'll walk right on. So waiting in that long line for slow boarding is essentially a choice. Except for Southwest, since they don't have assigned seats.
  - dublinben 12y ago
    You might not have room for a bag in the overhead compartments though, which can be a dealbreaker for some people.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
shamsulbuddy 12y ago
what technology you have used here for charts as it doesnt seems to be d3. Also will you be able to opensource the data behind it ?
- nikhizzle 12y ago
  The data is already open source: http://www.transtats.bts.gov/Fields.asp?Table_ID=236 http://www.transtats.bts.gov/Fields.asp?Table_ID=236 I did use d3 for the charts. Some were in SVG and some were in html. D3 is good for manipulating any kind of dom tree.
boothead 12y ago
Looks really cool. One small suggestion, sprinkle over some dc.js [1] and add some interactivity :-) [1] http://nickqizhu.github.io/dc.js/ http://nickqizhu.github.io/dc.js/
- nikhizzle 12y ago
  This is actually perfect for my next visualization project, where I'm going to start digging into SEC data. I invest in equities and I find I never have the correct information in the right format.
  - boothead 12y ago
    Indeed - I wish I had know about dc (or dc had existed) when I was working in hedge fund land. Would have made my life a lot easier :-)
coherentpony 12y ago
Unfortunately, it's fairly difficult to make any concrete conclusions from flight time, especially at a time resolution of one minute. The jet stream and other weather processes affect flight time by more than a minute. This also holds for mechanical reasons as well, since airplanes that have squawked 7700 will almost certainly be given landing priority, leaving other airplanes in the air for longer while they wait their turn.
- nikhizzle 12y ago
  I agree. I did the best I can by using the median over all flights from the past 12 months. But yes, there are a lot of irregular operations which can throw any conclusions to the wind. That said, when I was exploring this data I found that delays etc were much less frequent that I perceived.
mikegreen 12y ago
Interesting. Riddle me this: http://flightsphere.com/flight-time/from/atlanta/to/chicago http://flightsphere.com/flight-time/from/atlanta/to/chicago It says United has 6 flights per week from Atlanta to Chicago. They have 6 or 7 per day in reality. How are airports in metro areas consolidated? Are you using MDW instead of ORD for "Chicago"?
- nikhizzle 12y ago
  Thanks for finding this, I owe you a beer. Payable any time in the bay area. It is probably a bug in my data pipeline. I will look into this. I consolidate all airports in a metro area, MDW and ORD for Chicago.
  - sardonicbryan 12y ago
    I'm pretty sure UA has more than 48 flights a week to the NY area as well if you're aggregating JFK, LGA and EWR,the number should be closer to 20 per day. I just arbitrarily picked Friday, 10/17 from SFO => NYC and there are 23 flights. Your number might be right if excluding EWR, which like SFO is a major UA hub.
    - nikhizzle 12y ago
      yeah, EWR comes under Newark. Though I should consider merging metropolitan areas beyond cities. http://flightsphere.com/flight-time/from/newark/to/san-francisco http://flightsphere.com/flight-time/from/newark/to/san-franc...
      - sardonicbryan 12y ago
        Most cities actually have an airport code as well, ie CHI for Chicago and NYC for New York. It might be worthwhile to piggyback off of that for consistencies sake.
  - mikegreen 12y ago
    I'll take you up on that sometime soon hopefully. I'm a bit far from the bay area atm. What is the data source?
jwess 12y ago
Nice job, I especially like the "Route Facts" in the bottom-left. Last year I made a video tutorial using the same BTS data showing how to extract similar flight insights using Excel: https://pjw.me/data-analysis-and-dashboards-with-excel.htm https://pjw.me/data-analysis-and-dashboards-with-excel.htm
falcolas 12y ago
Appears to be missing data from Alaska Airlines. A lot of flights in the NW are handled by Alaska, so there's a number of missing connections from my local airport. [EDIT] Not quite correct, just missing all the Alaska airlines flights out of Bozeman. Perhaps missing the turboprop data?
- nikhizzle 12y ago
  Can you give me an example? Thanks! I also owe you a beer payable in the bay area at any time. I only have data for airlines with revenues > $20m, but I'm pretty sure Alaska falls into this group.
  - falcolas 12y ago
    http://flightsphere.com/flight-time/from/bozeman http://flightsphere.com/flight-time/from/bozeman http://www.alaskaair.com/ http://www.alaskaair.com/ - search BZN to SEA, there's an average of 2 flights per day
- nikhizzle 12y ago
  Hmmm. So sometimes these smaller regional flights are subcontracted out to small carriers who don't have $20m of revenue. In that case, I don't have the data since it costs $$$. I will look into it to figure out the reason. And those beers are still yours.
- tburch 12y ago
  Maybe it's just missing the carries (like Horizon) that are operated by Alaska?
fuzzythinker 12y ago
Very interesting visualization. One thing I want to point out however is the rearrangement of the widgets should not be based on its size, but on relatedness instead. An for that to happen, you need to design the layout instead of using auto re-arrangement based on screen size.
- nikhizzle 12y ago
  Good point, the tradeoffs between making something visually interesting vs relevant from a visualization point of view were really tough on this project. I will look into some kind of compromise. Related data does not always look good next to each other. More broadly, when I visualize a set of data I follow Alberto Cairo's guidelines of Organize, Compare, and Correlate. In this project, I moved away from that quite a bit because I was seeking to make something interesting as opposed to useful. I was scratching an existential need I had to make this data accessible and interesting. :)
  - fuzzythinker 12y ago
    For me, I see the following sets of widgets highly related and should be next to each other: - Flight Time By Airline, .. by Time of Day, Average Timeline - Flights By Month, .. by Day of Week, .. by Time of Day But they are not, when I adjust from screen wide from all sizes from 860 to 2740.
    - nikhizzle 12y ago
      Thanks for the feedback. I will play with your suggested arrangements a bit in my next iteration. I've added it to my basecamp.
smackfu 12y ago
I think you need to exclude months or weeks with zero flights, otherwise you get bad data for seasonal routes. For instance, look at this one: http://flightsphere.com/flight-time/from/hartford/to/las-vegas http://flightsphere.com/flight-time/from/hartford/to/las-veg... It's clearly a daily flight, based on the per-day chart, but it says it is 5 days a week, because they don't run it year-round.
- nikhizzle 12y ago
  I was looking into temporal filtering algorithms, but clearly your fix is much simpler and better. Sometimes, simplicity trumps sophistication. Two beers payable in the bay area!!
fireworks10 12y ago
What your data source / API?
lightningstorm 12y ago
Looks like you are pretty active around the web. Adding a github/twitter link might help get more feedback and allow other devs to find you.
sk24iam 12y ago
Nice work,how do you plan to monetize? Affiliate links to online travel agencies?
- nikhizzle 12y ago
  not really sure yet. This is just a demo of a real time analytics system I'm building.
lozf 12y ago
> We only have domestic, non-stop flights for now Should mention that it's US only. London / Edinburgh or Mumbai / New Delhi are still "Domestic" flights. /PEDANT

69 points by nikhizzle 12y ago

bargl 12y ago

The only thing I think is missing here boarding times for the different carriers. I was reading somewhere (I can't find the link) that southwest has the best method right now. I did find a link to another site that seems to have similar content but doesn't mention Southwests boarding style (because it isn't random it is based on least resistance boarding). http://menkes76.com/projects/boarding/boarding.htm http://menkes76.com/projects/boarding/boarding.htm Edit: Note Dewey found the right article below.

nikhizzle 12y ago
Very cool, maybe I will implement the simulator when I have a chance.
dewey 12y ago
This could be the article you are looking for: http://www.vox.com/2014/4/25/5647696/the-way-we-board-airplanes-makes-absolutely-no-sense http://www.vox.com/2014/4/25/5647696/the-way-we-board-airpla... Discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7649026 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7649026
- personlurking 12y ago
  And Mythbusters Boarding segment here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERt7EhX-gtE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERt7EhX-gtE
smackfu 12y ago
I'd argue that boarding times are generally irrelevant, despite being annoying. If you walk up to the gate a minute before they close it, you'll walk right on. So waiting in that long line for slow boarding is essentially a choice. Except for Southwest, since they don't have assigned seats.
- dublinben 12y ago
  You might not have room for a bag in the overhead compartments though, which can be a dealbreaker for some people.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

shamsulbuddy 12y ago

what technology you have used here for charts as it doesnt seems to be d3. Also will you be able to opensource the data behind it ?

nikhizzle 12y ago
The data is already open source: http://www.transtats.bts.gov/Fields.asp?Table_ID=236 http://www.transtats.bts.gov/Fields.asp?Table_ID=236 I did use d3 for the charts. Some were in SVG and some were in html. D3 is good for manipulating any kind of dom tree.

boothead 12y ago

Looks really cool. One small suggestion, sprinkle over some dc.js [1] and add some interactivity :-) [1] http://nickqizhu.github.io/dc.js/ http://nickqizhu.github.io/dc.js/

nikhizzle 12y ago
This is actually perfect for my next visualization project, where I'm going to start digging into SEC data. I invest in equities and I find I never have the correct information in the right format.
- boothead 12y ago
  Indeed - I wish I had know about dc (or dc had existed) when I was working in hedge fund land. Would have made my life a lot easier :-)

coherentpony 12y ago

Unfortunately, it's fairly difficult to make any concrete conclusions from flight time, especially at a time resolution of one minute. The jet stream and other weather processes affect flight time by more than a minute. This also holds for mechanical reasons as well, since airplanes that have squawked 7700 will almost certainly be given landing priority, leaving other airplanes in the air for longer while they wait their turn.

nikhizzle 12y ago
I agree. I did the best I can by using the median over all flights from the past 12 months. But yes, there are a lot of irregular operations which can throw any conclusions to the wind. That said, when I was exploring this data I found that delays etc were much less frequent that I perceived.

mikegreen 12y ago

Interesting. Riddle me this: http://flightsphere.com/flight-time/from/atlanta/to/chicago http://flightsphere.com/flight-time/from/atlanta/to/chicago It says United has 6 flights per week from Atlanta to Chicago. They have 6 or 7 per day in reality. How are airports in metro areas consolidated? Are you using MDW instead of ORD for "Chicago"?

nikhizzle 12y ago
Thanks for finding this, I owe you a beer. Payable any time in the bay area. It is probably a bug in my data pipeline. I will look into this. I consolidate all airports in a metro area, MDW and ORD for Chicago.
- sardonicbryan 12y ago
  I'm pretty sure UA has more than 48 flights a week to the NY area as well if you're aggregating JFK, LGA and EWR,the number should be closer to 20 per day. I just arbitrarily picked Friday, 10/17 from SFO => NYC and there are 23 flights. Your number might be right if excluding EWR, which like SFO is a major UA hub.
  - nikhizzle 12y ago
    yeah, EWR comes under Newark. Though I should consider merging metropolitan areas beyond cities. http://flightsphere.com/flight-time/from/newark/to/san-francisco http://flightsphere.com/flight-time/from/newark/to/san-franc...
    - sardonicbryan 12y ago
      Most cities actually have an airport code as well, ie CHI for Chicago and NYC for New York. It might be worthwhile to piggyback off of that for consistencies sake.
- mikegreen 12y ago
  I'll take you up on that sometime soon hopefully. I'm a bit far from the bay area atm. What is the data source?

jwess 12y ago

Nice job, I especially like the "Route Facts" in the bottom-left. Last year I made a video tutorial using the same BTS data showing how to extract similar flight insights using Excel: https://pjw.me/data-analysis-and-dashboards-with-excel.htm https://pjw.me/data-analysis-and-dashboards-with-excel.htm

falcolas 12y ago

Appears to be missing data from Alaska Airlines. A lot of flights in the NW are handled by Alaska, so there's a number of missing connections from my local airport. [EDIT] Not quite correct, just missing all the Alaska airlines flights out of Bozeman. Perhaps missing the turboprop data?

nikhizzle 12y ago
Can you give me an example? Thanks! I also owe you a beer payable in the bay area at any time. I only have data for airlines with revenues > $20m, but I'm pretty sure Alaska falls into this group.
- falcolas 12y ago
  http://flightsphere.com/flight-time/from/bozeman http://flightsphere.com/flight-time/from/bozeman http://www.alaskaair.com/ http://www.alaskaair.com/ - search BZN to SEA, there's an average of 2 flights per day
nikhizzle 12y ago
Hmmm. So sometimes these smaller regional flights are subcontracted out to small carriers who don't have $20m of revenue. In that case, I don't have the data since it costs $$$. I will look into it to figure out the reason. And those beers are still yours.
tburch 12y ago
Maybe it's just missing the carries (like Horizon) that are operated by Alaska?

fuzzythinker 12y ago

Very interesting visualization. One thing I want to point out however is the rearrangement of the widgets should not be based on its size, but on relatedness instead. An for that to happen, you need to design the layout instead of using auto re-arrangement based on screen size.

nikhizzle 12y ago
Good point, the tradeoffs between making something visually interesting vs relevant from a visualization point of view were really tough on this project. I will look into some kind of compromise. Related data does not always look good next to each other. More broadly, when I visualize a set of data I follow Alberto Cairo's guidelines of Organize, Compare, and Correlate. In this project, I moved away from that quite a bit because I was seeking to make something interesting as opposed to useful. I was scratching an existential need I had to make this data accessible and interesting. :)
- fuzzythinker 12y ago
  For me, I see the following sets of widgets highly related and should be next to each other: - Flight Time By Airline, .. by Time of Day, Average Timeline - Flights By Month, .. by Day of Week, .. by Time of Day But they are not, when I adjust from screen wide from all sizes from 860 to 2740.
  - nikhizzle 12y ago
    Thanks for the feedback. I will play with your suggested arrangements a bit in my next iteration. I've added it to my basecamp.

smackfu 12y ago

I think you need to exclude months or weeks with zero flights, otherwise you get bad data for seasonal routes. For instance, look at this one: http://flightsphere.com/flight-time/from/hartford/to/las-vegas http://flightsphere.com/flight-time/from/hartford/to/las-veg... It's clearly a daily flight, based on the per-day chart, but it says it is 5 days a week, because they don't run it year-round.

nikhizzle 12y ago
I was looking into temporal filtering algorithms, but clearly your fix is much simpler and better. Sometimes, simplicity trumps sophistication. Two beers payable in the bay area!!

fireworks10 12y ago

What your data source / API?

lightningstorm 12y ago

Looks like you are pretty active around the web. Adding a github/twitter link might help get more feedback and allow other devs to find you.

sk24iam 12y ago

Nice work,how do you plan to monetize? Affiliate links to online travel agencies?

nikhizzle 12y ago
not really sure yet. This is just a demo of a real time analytics system I'm building.

lozf 12y ago

> We only have domestic, non-stop flights for now Should mention that it's US only. London / Edinburgh or Mumbai / New Delhi are still "Domestic" flights. /PEDANT