OpenFlights was originally created as a personal flight mapper, so you can record your own flights and share them with the world.  However, our inventive users have come up with some entirely different things to do with the site, and I’d like to share a few of them today.

Planning get-togethers

Over at FlyerTalk, the frequent-flyer website extraordinaire, there are dozens of “Dos”, or get-togethers, in cities all over the world every year.  These involve people flying in from cities all over the world for a weekend or so, all on different days and different flights, and then dispersing the same way.  How to find out who else is coming from the same direction, on what flights and when?  For the fourth Continental Do (Feb 6-7, Houston, Texas), sbm12 had a brilliant idea: let every participant list their own flights on OpenFlights under CODoIV.  Want to figure out who’s coming in from Philadelphia?  One click and you’ll find out.  The same idea would work nicely for conferences, weddings or any other larger event, private or public, and as plans change, everybody can change their own flights, with no need for a central coordinator.

Showcasing your airport

Texas is famously big, and the Office of the Governor wanted to show visitors just how many international connections its airports have.  What better way to show this than mapping them on OpenFlights as DFW_International?

Mapping an airline

Given the care lavished on flight maps in inflight magazines, it’s surprising how bad the online route maps of most airlines are.   One way to address this is to create a profile on OpenFlights, like GAflight‘s listing of all Garuda Indonesia routes, past and present.

Any other fun or useful ways to use OpenFlights?  Let us know.

Keep on flying,
-jani