Delta Virtual Airlines Water Cooler - Extracting all possible flights and plotting on a map

Delta Virtual Airlines Water Cooler | Airline Operations | Extracting all possible flights and plotting on a map

DVA13608
Captain, A320

Joined on January 26 2019
Moose Club
Century Club
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Toulouse Century Club
Online Century Club

Edmonton, AB Canada

143 legs, 242.3 hours
140 legs, 235.1 hours online
140 legs, 238.3 hours ACARS

Posted onPost created on February 14 2019 13:19 ET by Gerard Beekmans

This started out as a comment I left in my previous thread at https://www.deltava.org/thread.do?id=0x21f2b

I put some work into extracting all the valid flights in the DVA database so I can plot them all on a map to see which areas connect to each other via routes and how one might be able to jump from place to place to go across the world (when not using a B777 or A380 that could do it on one "tank of gas" type thing).

Exporting the schedule into PFPX was a good start. It provides an XML file to download which I'm writing some scripts for that will parse it.

For starters, to extract flights from the XML I run the following (Linux type systems only. No idea how to accomplish this on Windows using PowerShell but I'm sure that can't be hard):

xmlstarlet sel -T -t -m /PFPX_FLIGHT_LIST/FLIGHT -v "concat(Airline,FlightNumber,'-',From,'-',To)" -n pfpxsched.xml > dva-flights.txt

I end up with a file that has lines like this:

AF6-LFPG-KJFK
AF7-KJFK-LFPG
AF8-LFPG-KJFK
...
DL42-KJFK-EBBR
DL43-EBBR-KJFK
DL46-LLBG-KJFK
...
WSH5014-CYYC-KDFW
WSH9284-CYWG-CYHZ
WSH9285-CYHZ-CYWG

And so on.

In total I ended up with 20,962 flights...why is there no accomplishment for somebody who manages to fly every one of them?

Anyway, I digress.

The next bit I have to do now is find a way to query an online source to obtain latitude and longitude coordinates for each of the airports listed on these lines, then create a KML file to load into Google Earth. I am sure I can't put 20,962 entries in a single KML file, though. That part still needs some through.

Gerard Beekmans

Captain, A320

DVA2887
Senior Captain, A320
OLP, 737-ATP, VFRADV

Joined on January 30 2006
50 State Club
Globetrotter
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Millennium Club
DVA Fifteen-Year Anniversary
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Toulouse 250 Club
Online Eight Century

Charlotte, NC

1,287 legs, 1,796.9 hours
841 legs, 1,048.5 hours online
1,269 legs, 1,774.9 hours ACARS
31 legs, 49.6 hours event
3 legs dispatched, 2.5 hours

Posted onPost created on February 14 2019 14:13 ET by Andrew Vane

Interesting data Gerard.

DVA Pilot Roger Pilgrem had just over 7,000 flights flown before he retired a year ago. He'd been a member 15 years. Keep in mind some of those routes are duplicates and that we're adding new routes every month.

Andrew Vane (DVA2887)

Posted onPost created on February 14 2019 15:23 ET by Gerard Beekmans

Yes, I just ran across the duplicates too so I'm currently modifying my code to remove duplicates and also remove their reciprocal routes. They don't matter for this project of showing lines between airport pairs. A sample KML with a dozen entries loaded perfectly into Google Earth.

Gerard Beekmans

Captain, A320

Posted onPost created on February 14 2019 16:37 ET by Gerard Beekmans

It's done. 4,797 unique airport pairs in the current schedule. When I plotted it all, it became a mess that was largely useless when looking at areas like the US. Too many criss-crossing lines to make sense of. However, when looking at the Pacific Ocean it was actually helpful in figuring out all the various connections to try and get to a certain place while eyeballing the distances. I can't seem to add images to show the results. I'll open a new thread where I believe I can add some images.

Gerard Beekmans

Captain, A320

Posted onPost created on February 14 2019 21:01 ET by Andrew Vane

Interesting exercise. And...Google Earth is quite a great free tool.

Andrew Vane (DVA2887)

Posted onPost created on February 14 2019 21:12 ET by Gerard Beekmans

Google Earth in web browser struggled like crazy but the actual download Pro version (still free) handled the file quite well. I'll make the file available in case somebody else cares to look at it and use it. Not sure about the actual usefulness but it looks cool seeing all of DVA and codeshares visualized

Gerard Beekmans

Captain, A320

Posted onPost created on February 14 2019 23:52 ET by Gerard Beekmans

If anybody wants a copy of the KML file, it's up for grabs here: https://cloud.andromgx.com/s/KEGT8qWSXni2GzQ

Gerard Beekmans

Captain, A320

DVA3672
Senior Captain, A320
OLP
E-MAIL

Joined on October 29 2006
B757 100 Club
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Online Fifteen Century

"Chris, NOT in Seattle"
Northeastern United States

2,534 legs, 6,223.1 hours
1,537 legs, 3,252.2 hours online
2,243 legs, 5,407.0 hours ACARS
4 legs, 6.0 hours event
2 legs dispatched, 19.5 hours

Posted onPost created on February 15 2019 12:54 ET by Chris Frasure

I always thought it would be cool to have a tool where you could input your origin airport, minimum number of legs, and then it would compute a trip for you getting you back to your original starting airport in that many flights and to random airports. Kinda like a 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon game LOL

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