For background on this, see my first article on this topic.
As previously mentioned, the first stage for the development of my flight logging app is research, and a natural starting point is to look at existing solutions.
In many ways, this post represents my personal opinion. If you disagree with me in any way, be sure to leave a comment with what you think!
myFlightradar24
Jugding by my brief Google searches, the most popular solution for something similar to what I want to create is myFlightradar24. This is a logging platform created by (you’re not going to believe it) Flightradar24, which makes it highly accessible to many avgeeks as lots of us are already signed up!
It turns out I actually had used myFlightradar24 about 4 years ago, and that’s my dashboard featured above. Looking at the dashboard, here are my likes and dislikes…
| Likes | Dislikes |
| Map with routes shown, pins indicate airports. | Dashboard looks slightly outdated, like mid 2010s. |
| Lots of stats shown in easy view. Includes stats I hadn’t thought about: class, seat position. | No dark mode! |
| Shows CO2 emissions (maybe I could add this, and a link to offset?). | Colour choices for graphs could be better, difficult to read white-on-pink, for example. |
| Various graphs show stats very aesthetically. | I know for a fact FR24 knows the aircraft reg I flew on and the exact flight times, so why doesn’t it auto-fill them?! |
| Automatic flight details finder from flight number and date. |
So, my key takeaways from myFlightradar24 is that data auto-filling is kinda awesome, and something I definitely want to feature in my final app. However, the outdated UI really pulls it down. In my product, I intend to improve on all features mentioned in the dislikes column, especially the UI.
JetLog
As mentioned in my previous post, JetLog is a self-hosted flight logging tool that runs in Docker. I installed it onto my home server so I could have a play around with it, and here are my thoughts (and some pictures of course!).
| Likes | Dislikes |
| Map with routes shown, dots indicate airports. | No dark mode! (can’t you tell I’m a programmer). |
| The stats that most people are interested in are shown front and centre on the home page. | Lack of graphs on statistics page. |
| Auto fills origin and destination from inputting airline and flight number | Map shows entire world when it doesn’t need to (i.e. no longer-haul flights in DB), so maybe zoom to focus? |
| Great choice for home-labbers/privacy-centric users who want to log their flights without giving the data to a 3rd party (yes, I’m aware that’s exactly who I am to most of you!). | Slightly difficult to install for those who have no experience with Docker. |
Overall, if I had no intention of creating my own flight logging application, Jetlog is what I’d probably use. Once installed, it’s simple to use and has a pretty nice UI. The map and stats pages could do with a bit of an upgrade but generally a solid app.
Next Steps
I’ll probably take a look at a few more existing products before continuing. Once I’ve done that, I’ll start listing what the user wants to get out of the product, and thinking of the necessary data sources to get that output! Thanks for sticking with me again! Be sure to share your opinions in the comments.
