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READERS SHARE FIRST-HAND KNOWLEDGE, EXPERIENCES AND IDEAS BUSI N E S S T R A V E L L E R .C OM/F ORUM
request new airports/airlines to be added. It even has some of the dirt airstrips in Kenya included!
WHICH DIGITAL FLIGHT LOGBOOK TO USE?
➜ S WITZ E R L ANDING We’ve been manually logging the flights of our 21-month-old, but think it’s time to go digital as he’s already reached 50 flights. Any suggestions on the best website/app to use?
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➜ S W IS SDIVER I use
flightmemory.com and have about 1,000 flights logged. It works well, although there’s been no update for years and no app. I was using
flightstats.com for flight times, but I moved to my.flightradar24. com as it’s easier to use and not restricted (occasionally
flightstats.com is). I pay a nominal annual fee for both services.
➜ TR A V EL SFOR FUN I would strongly recommend openflights. org. The main difference compared to sites like
flightmemory.com is that it isn’t commercially focused, so it allows easy exporting of data (CSV format is easily read by Excel) should you ever want to use the data somewhere else. It also allows easy importing of CSV data, so if you’ve been recording information in Excel, it should be easy enough to switch, with minimal renaming/formatting of fields. But equally, it allows entry of information directly on the site.
Openflights.com also includes a few
different map backgrounds, is fully zoomable and offers comprehensive stats by number of flights or distance for airline, aircraft, airport and class.
➜ FFLYER T JW1 I highly recommend Flightdiary – it’s now part of flightradar24 so a lot of the data syncs automatically across. Also, it has an excellent visual display of all your information (including printable map) and a support service that allows you to
NOVEMB ER 2018
➜ INTHE SANDPIT From 1975 I used a manual log, which came from Ian Allan books. My first flight recorded was VC8 LHR MME on British Midland, although I had flown before that as a child (BOAC Junior Jet Club Log Book) and youth, but could not recall flight numbers. Similarly, a lot of my cabin-crew days in the 80s are not included as I misplaced my logbooks. Over a course of many weekends, I uploaded the lot onto my flight diary at
my.flightradar24.com, which works really well for what I need. This next trip will see my 1,100th flight logged, it’s interesting to look at the map and go through the log to see where I have been and on what frightening types of aircraft/airlines.
➜ L U G ANOPIR A T E Electronic flight logs are all well and good, but I’d go for an old-fashioned pen and book. I’ve had mine since 1979 and it’s a wealth of information, from date, aircraft and seat to reg no, route, additional notes and more. I tried an online version, but I can’t recall its name so I’m unable to retrieve the data – luckily I have it all in my hard copy logbook. My boys also had one from Lufthansa,
which the captain would sign for them so they have a nice record of their flights. And my final point, it’s such a shame
to lose the art of writing as we go all electronic. I still send handwritten invitations and thank-you cards, and I still make paper notes in meetings.
➜ AL AINBOY56 Good to hear from another fellow Junior Jet Club member. Like INTHESANDPIT, I still have my details – first flight was on a BOAC DH Comet 4 in May 1959 from LHR to Tokyo, with stops in Beirut, Karachi, Delhi, Calcutta, Bangkok and Hong Kong, a near 24-hour journey. As a child, I
always used to get the captains to fill in my logbook and on many occasions sat with them in the nose cone. Now, as that log is long since full, I have made my own Excel version on the laptop and fill in the details by using
flightaware.com, which gives miles flown for each flight, is quite accurate and very useful.
➜ MKC OL7 4 Have you tried Jet Lovers Your Flight Club,
jetlovers.com, yet? Using social media check-ins it automates some of the process. You can select your flight from the list, which pre-populates the aircraft reg, then you can define the purpose of the trip, crew, what cabin type and even input your seat number. It then gives you interesting stats, such
as most popular airport used, cabin type, longest route and so on. It also has a good GloVe visualisation of your travels. The site works well on a computer and is mobile friendly. I’ve not spotted an app yet.
➜ S W IS SDIVER I’ve taken a look at these various services, except
jetlovers.com, which is based on social networks, and which I don’t want for all sort of reasons. So,
openflights.org: a basic service. Main advantage – importing! While it didn’t work from FlightMemory, very unfortunately, I could do it from TripIt,
tripit.com, with limited success (basic data only; travel class wrong). So I’ll delete it as soon I have no more hope with the FlightMemory import. I think
flightmemory.com is still
excellent, but a bit outdated. Only pdf exports available and inputting is as basic as with OpenFlights. For example, the only item that comes automatically is the airline once the flight number is entered. It does, however, have a “Journey” feature that allows the regrouping of some flights. Cost: US$55 for two years (one year is possible). By far the best is
my.flightradar24.com. Once you’ve entered a date and flight
busine s s tr a v eller .com
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