Hello Everyone,

I've just released a new update for PlaneLogger, which introduces one of the most requested features: Flights!

It's still a work in progress, but you can now log aircraft you have flown on, as well as aircraft you have seen. Simply search for the aircraft as normal, then click the "Add Flight" button. You can then add the flight you took on this aircraft.

There is a basic "View My Flights" page, similar to the "View Sightings" page. We will be upgrading this in due course to add flight stats.

Unfortunately you can't currently upload images, but we will be adding support for this soon.

I hope you enjoy it. I look forward to hearing your feedback, and suggestions on what you would like to see next.

Gavin,

great feature, glad it has been added.

Tried to enter Trondheim (TRD) as departure airport and got the following error message: "From airport could not be found. Please ensure you entered a valid airport code."

Any ideas?

Cheers,

Dennis

Hi Gavin,

one more bug apparently. I wasn´t able to enter a flight with a KLM Cityhopper Fokker 70. I tried three different registrations but all I got was a runtime error each time...

Dennis

A feature I have wanted for some time.

Thanks for adding it.

Thanks for the bug reports - it wasn't liking aircraft that didnt have a "type" set in the database. Also, Trondheim somehow seemed to have got messed up in the database.

I've corrected both of these, so it should work now :)

Hey Gavin,

Great addition! Started adding some flights. One question - Tried to enter a demo flight at NKX but received an error. I believe that it may be partially due to NKX not existing in the db, but can the origin and destination be the same.

Please add KNKX - Miramar Marine Corps Air Station to db.

Stephen

I have added a flight with the same origin and destination so it is possible.

Stephen,

Miramar is listed in the database under its ICAO code of KNKX - theres no IATA code listed for it. Using the ICAO code it works fine:

https://www.planelogger.com/Flight/View/333

I'll update it to add the IATA code.

Excellent How do i find out which ones i have flown on? Have put information in comments before ?

Hi Cazpaul,

If you have a look on the airlines fleet pages, they will now show a green "flown it" icon next to aircraft you have flown on.

I'm not sure what you mean by the comments?

Hey Gavin,

Liking the flight logging. Just wanted to see if you can update the description html (MySightings - PlaneLogger ), as the tabbed browsing shows My Sightings still in Chrome and not My Flights.

I believe that Cazpaul is asking if there is a way to search the comments in My Sightings? I too have previously entered flights in to the sightings comments.

Thanks,

Stephen

ah, thanks Stephen.

I've changed the title for you, and I've added a comments column to My Sightings, so you can now use the search box to find any that you might have flown.

Hey Gavin,

Looks great! The addition of the comments field is welcomed as well.

Thanks,

Stephen

Hey Gavin,

Looks great! The addition of the comments field is welcomed as well.

Thanks,

Stephen

Fantastic, delighted to see this feature added. Thanks

Any Chance next update we can print out Anything found in Comments field. Thanks Cazpaul

Put Flown on, in search box only shows 9 aircraft on Page can't see anymore?

It looks like there's a bug there - if you filter the results by entering search text, it isn't updating the counts at the bottom.

I've checked directly in the database, and you've only entered "flown on" in the comments for 10 of your sightings, so they are all being displayed there.

Sorry about last post was looking up wrongly working fine. Have not got "flown on" in my comment box only LHR-BOS etc Paul

Hi Nighthawk,

Again - thanks for adding this, fantastic.

One thing - as you know a number of airlines are listed with different spellings/names (eg British Mediterranean Airways, Br Mediterranean Airlines, SALE-British Mediterranean). In "my sightings" we can manually alter these for consistency; it's not possible in "my flights".

Is this something that will be added? Or should we keep sending through the name corrections to get them consistent in the database?

Thanks

Dougie,

I would keep sending through the name corrections if you can, so we can get them all merged and consistent in the database.

I'll look into adding an edit field too, but ideally I'd rather have everything consistent in the DB.

Nighthawk,

another point - the aircraft types. eg. Tupolev Tu-154 vs just Tu-154. As you know the types are not all inconsistent in the database.

For aircraft seen, we can edit the type so that it is consistent for our "top 20" table. However we cannot edit the types for Flown, and editing in Seen doesn't carry over into Flown. So I have for example 42 Tu-154s flown and another 8 Tupolev Tu-154.

How best to standardie these?

Cheers

Dougie is, of course, correct. In my planespotting hobby, I try to figure out exactly what kind of an aircraft it is I have viewed. I enjoy the research and enjoy recording it in Planelogger. So I find it vexing that the DB is very inconsistent with 737-800(WL) vs. 737-800(W) for example. It's been clearly affecting our top 20 lists.

Nighthawk

to ensure consistency, how to do you plan to have the Russian aircraft listed?

Would you like the 154s to be updated to all be "Tu-154", or "Tupolev Tu-154"? So we know which to report for updating?

Thanks

Dougie,

We don't normally include the manufacturer in the model name, so Tu-154 would be preferred.

Don't get me wrong, Gavin. I love Planelogger. You and Dennis are doing an amazing job. But Dougie has hit on its most glaring problem: your model and type designations work well only for American military aircraft (P-51D-30-NA), Boeings (777-224), and Airbuses (A320-212). Nothing else can be neatly shoehorned in. Your system introduces a spurious hyphen into British military aircraft (Victor-K.2). It makes it impossible to enter consistent models and types for general aviation aircraft and aircraft of most other military services. What should I do with Cessna 152? Piper PA-28-140? Bell 407? or truly interesting warbirds (PZL-Mielec {MiG} Lim-5 [MiG-17F] FRESCO C) or antique show planes? For G-STBF the CAA has Manufacturer: Boeing Company and Type: Boeing 777-336ER (a little duplicative redundancy there). The FAA website says N721AN Manufacturer name is Boeing, Model is 777-323ER, and type is fixed winged multi-engine (in other words category-no help there). My default would be Make & Model without the accursed hyphen. It works much better: DeHavilland Victor K.2, Boeing 777-223ER, Airbus A320-212, North American P-51D-30-NA, Cessna 152, Piper PA-28-140. I'll take my chances with ultralights and homebuilts. For now I recommend A.) for general aviation to use make and model in the MODEL and leave TYPE blank. B.) be consistent with winglets (WL vs. W). It's probably too late to engineer a global change. Thanks Gavin.

Hi there

I have found that in "My sightings" that if you press the "edit" button and go back to info page, you can put whatever descirption into Aircraft type, leave model empty. This will cancel the hypen and alter your "My sightings" description as well as your top ten!

Ron

Yes, thanks. Jonathan

Unfortunately, there's a lot of variation in the way aircraft manufacturers name their aircraft, which leads to problems finding a way to display them. "Model-Type" was chosen mainly because that format works great with modern Airbus and Boeing aircraft, which is what the majority of users are interested in. It sadly fails when it comes to older types, military and general aviation.

There's also a few different ways these codes are used - displaying in the aircraft information screen, for grouping in the My Flights / My Sightings pages, and also in the production lists and airline fleet pages. So we need a convention that fits all uses. The alternative would be to introduce a whole series of additional code fields per frame, but then you're just increasing the workload on the data editors.

A while ago we did introduce a 3rd field for our data editors, the text you see displayed on the aircraft details page can now be set independently of the "model-type" field, allowing erroneous dashes to be removed where needed, while still protecting the fleet and production lists.

But unfortunately, with 400,000+ records in the database, changing them all is a daunting process. Keeping up with all the registration changes that happen every day keeps the data editors busy enough, so it's unlikely we will ever get to them all any time soon.

Unfortunately, as our database was acquired from multiple sources, this adds a further level of inconsistency between naming and display conventions.

We're doing the best we can, for now highlight any inconsistencies you feel are particularly annoying, and we'll aim to fix them when we can. Ultimately I would like to build in a way of allowing users to contribute changes (to then be reviewed by data editors) so we can try and speed up the process, but this is down the list a little at the moment.