Some statistics from 200 flights

[TobyV]

I've loved flying all my life. As a child I only got to fly typically on one return a year but since then I started to fly more, not enough for frequent traveller status nor as much as someone who flies for a living, but a fair bit. I kept a list of all the types I flew on, all the airlines I flew with and all the places I've been to. Before anyone asks, I don't write down the registrations The last time was my 200th flight, which also happened to be my first on the Bombardier CSeries, so seeing as I reached a milestone, I thought I'd post some charts. Does anyone else keep a log like this (other than those who are required to for their jobs)?

[Airspeed]

Pretty impressive, Toby!
If I charted my flights, it would be described as "flatlining"

[Kevin Farnell]

Hi Toby

That's very interesting.
I have a log of my flights, but have not turned them into bar charts. Nothing that a quick dabble in Excel can't fix.
Out of interest, I assume that you count a return trip as 2 flights. In that way, any one way flights would still register.

Regards.

Kevin

[TobyV]

Correct, I don't go in for this whole airline questionnaire "Please count a return flight as one", because some of the above are "round in circle" or three sectors with my friend who has a PPL (the "missing" bar in the airlines chart).

This is all done in Excel. I list the date, type, airline, flight number, origin and destination and then have summary tables that count the number of different types, airlines and destinations. I have only ever departed from GVA for example and never landed back there.

[JohnD]

Interesting Toby, I have recorded all my flights also. My first was in a Bristol Britannia G-ANCE from Stansted (old side terminal) to Aden. It was in June 1962. Interestingly as it was a trooping flight (my father was in the RAF) the seats faced rearwards!

Since then I have flown a total of 246 flights, in 201 different airframes, some more than once. I have flown 776 Hours with a total of 355,311 miles.

I do record the registrations and then trace the history of each airframe, including photos from first flight to current status.

I have many enjoyable memories including Concorde, DH Beaver, VC-10, 1-11, Beverley, Argosy and many more.
I usually try to get something from the flight, like napkins with the airline name or logo. I have a bag of sugar from my first flight with British United Airways on it.

I origionally used Microsoft Access database for my records, but since retiring I have been using Filemaker on the Mac, which has been a very steep learning curve.
As you may have guessed this has been a lifelong and enjoyable project for me.

I have produced a graph similar to yours, how do I add it to this post.

Happy flying.

John

[alemaobaiano]

I used to keep records when I first started flying back in 69, the typical Manchester - Costa del Sol once a year thing. I kept it up through my Air Cadet flights, including my glider course and subsequent solo flights. I kept a record of the jollies during my RAF days too, and then in my early days as a civvie when it was still pretty much a yearly treat.

That all changed when I started working as an international field engineer in the mid 90s. It got to the point where I needed to check the stamps in my passport to remember where I'd been the day before, so details like which airline and which aircraft were quickly forgotten. Which city was usually a bigger issue, especially as the company liked to use one hotel chain so the rooms all looked the same. On one occasion I was on four flights in a single day

Things haven't really changed much over the last 20 years, I think I just picked up flight overload, instead of being something exciting as in the early days. Now it's just a means of getting from A to B. In the last 10 days for example, I've flown 4:20 on the B738, 4:15 on the A321, 0:45 on the A319, 0:55 on the A318, 2 x 1:40 on S-92s and 2 x 1:25 on AW139s. I can only tell you that because the boarding passes haven't gone to accounts yet. My trips from August are just a blur, as these flights will be in a short while.

It's good to see people keeping records, it reminds me of a time when air travel was more interesting and exciting.....sniff.

TTFN

[TobyV]

I have produced a graph similar to yours, how do I add it to this post.

Hello John,

Since the demise of photobucket as a useful image host, it is getting rather harder to find somewhere to host images online. I host on my own webspace, but below where the "save draft", "preview" and "submit" buttons are, there is a tab marked "attachments". Maybe it's possible to use this to attach images?

Toby

[JohnD]

Thanks Toby

I've uploaded to my DropBox - the link is below

https://www.dropbox.com/s/1283e9ohcfc4k ... y.png?dl=0

In summary the chart shows how many flights for each airframe and how many airframes. Some flights have been in the same aircraft at different times. For example The Boeing 737 shows 45 flights but in 39 different airframes.

Just under half of all the flights have been for business. Which includes Australia, Sweden, France, Germany and the USA.

While I still remember I was considering writing a book about them all.

Since retiring I have written books about our family histories and this could be my next project, between sim flights of course.

If anyone is interested I could expand the charts to show operators and routes.

Regards
John

[T6flyer]

I have always kept a logbook of all the flying that I have achieved. Besides the usual Pooley's logbooks - now on number 5, I also use an old version of the Skylog program, which works out in a myriad of ways, where and when and in what type. Now up to almost 2000 flights in over 250 types. Some only 10 minutes in length and some hours. One aeroplane have flown in 285 times!!!

Martin

[Archer]

I must admit that I started keeping track of flights quite a bit before I started with my flying training. Mainly so that I could keep track of some of the more interesting types that I had encountered. Once I started with my training, I obviously had to log those flights, but I also kept track of all the occasions on which I was a passenger in an aircraft just as I had done before then. I have managed to keep this up but I don't have any fancy bar charts I'm afraid. A year or so ago I switched to using a digital logbook and have managed to incorporate both my official and unofficial logbooks into that. This tells me that I am up to 1537 hours of flying as a pilot, 110 hours logged in simulators and 171 hours as a passenger. So in comparison, the hours that I was being transported from A to B by a couple of professionals at the pointy end don't amount to all that much