Flight Log

I developed the visualisation below to give an at-a-glance overview of my flying history. You can adjust the date range, or broadly filter by carrier, haul or cabin. The counts in the third pane can also be used as filters, if you want to see a more specific airline or aircraft type. (On phones it may be a struggle to view; landscape orientation should help but a larger device will be preferable.)


I also use FlightRadar24 to track my flights; whilst it doesn’t have all the slice-and-dice options I’d like, it does allow for a handy cut by year, plus of course takes care of mapping. Here’s how that looks as of October 2022:

My Flights 2004-2023

Notable Flights

(Of course, opinions on notability may vary!)

  • Flight 1, First flight: 17-Dec-2004, London (Stansted) to Oslo (Torp) on Ryanair, at the age of 21!
  • Flight 4, First British Airways branded, First Oneworld: 10-Nov-2006, Edinburgh to Bristol on BA Connect.
  • Flight 24, First long-haul: 15-May-2008, London (Gatwick) to Calgary on Thomas Cook Airlines.
  • Flight 26, First SkyTeam flight: 21-Sep-2008, Edinburgh – Amsterdam on KLM.
  • Flight 45, First British Airways mainline: 13-Oct-2010, London (Heathrow) to Seattle.
  • Flight 59, First premium economy: 04-Feb-2012, London (Heathrow) to San Diego in BA World Traveller Plus / Longest flight, 5485 miles.
  • Flight 64, First business class: 22-Mar-2012, Rome (Fiumicino) to London (Gatwick) in BA Club Europe.
  • Flight 76, Shortest flight: 3-Jan-2013, San Diego to Los Angeles, 109 miles.
  • Flight 77, First first class: 3-Jan-2013, Los Angeles to San Francisco, in American Airlines domestic first class.
  • Flight 80, First long-haul business class: 14-Jan-2013, San Diego to London (Heathrow), in BA Club World.
  • Flight 84, 100,000 miles flown: 04-Aug-2013, Edinburgh to Bristol on Easyjet.
  • Flight 100, Hundredth flight: 21-Apr-2014, Bristol to Edinburgh on Easyjet, after almost ten years of flying.
  • Flight 104, The Barra beach landing.
  • Flights 119/120 The BabyBus BA1 London (City) to New York (JFK)
  • Flight 125, The BA 737 Farewell Flight.
  • Flight 147, KLM’s ‘Farewell Fokker 70’ special flight.
  • Flight 173, First in-air divert; first go-around: 27-Jul-2019, London (Stansted) to Pisa on Ryanair, diverted to Bologna.
  • Flight 180, 100th distinct leg: 06-Mar-2020, London (Heathrow) to Frankfurt.
  • Flight 190, 100,000 miles flown on BA; first Club Suite: 14-Jan-2022, Chicago (O’Hare) to London (Heathrow).
  • Flight 198, First Star Alliance flight 15-Aug-2022, Oslo to London Heathrow on SAS.
  • Flight 200, Two-hundredth flight: 12-Sep-2022, Edinburgh to Bristol on Easyjet, after almost 18 years of flying.

Assorted Stats

Inspired by various threads and discussions on FlyerTalk, here’s a bit of a deeper dive (as of November 2023) into the data…

Operating Airlines

In all, I’ve had flights operated by 33 distinct airlines. Of these, six are now defunct: BA Connect, Germanwings, Thomas Cook, Flybe (which absorbed BA Connect, so good luck to whoever tries those routes next), Norwegian Air UK, and Alitalia.

Unduplicated Mileage and ‘novelty factor’

Unduplicated mileage is the total across all flights, ignoring repeats. Thus, whilst I have covered 233016 miles in 219 flights, there are only 129 unique legs – totalling 185109 miles – out of those. This represents a ‘novelty factor’ of 59% by flights, or 79% by distance.

The effect is starker by airline. For instance, I have flown 16 times with KLM CityHopper, for 5136 miles: but these were racked up on just 3 distinct routes spanning 885 miles (a novelty factor of 17%). In fact, all but one of those legs was between Bristol and Amsterdam!

Similarly, regular shuttling between Edinburgh and Bristol drops EasyJet down to a mileage novelty of 50%, with my 41 flights only involving 14 distinct routes. BA fares better but still suffers from repeated domestic travel: for mainline services I’ve covered 113154 miles, but only 75% of them novel.

At the other extreme, there are 14 airlines for which my slice of their network is completely distinct – for the simple reason that I’ve only flown with them once. But for American Airlines I’ve managed 10971 miles over six flights with no repeats; Air Transat has even more mileage (13505) but that’s just four flights (two pairs of transatlantic returns).

Airports

My flights have involved 65 distinct airports. Of these, 5 – AGP, CGN, CTA, IAD, PSA – I have flown from but not to; and 5 more – BLQ, BWI, GIB, YTZ, YVR – were arrivals but not departure points.

Most used are LHR (79 flights), EDI (78 flights) and BRS (51 flights); with AMS, LGW, OSL and LCY the only others in double-digits.