Flight Tracking App

Introduction

I’ve always been fascinated by air travel-the logistics, the engineering, and yes, even the airport experience. That curiosity eventually turned into something more: a personal project to track every flight I’ve taken.

It all started when I flew from Newark (EWR) to Toronto (YYZ) and felt convinced I was on the exact same aircraft on the return trip. That little hunch sparked a much bigger idea: what if I could track not just where I was flying, but what aircraft I was on, how many miles I was covering, and how frequently I was flying certain airlines?

So I built a custom, interactive, purpose built dashboard for my own personal use.

What I built:

This is a fully interactive flight dashboard that tracks:

Every aircraft I’ve flown on
Flight paths across the world
Aircraft type and manufacturer
Total flight miles by airline
Airport and airline frequency
Cumulative flight activity over time

Tech Stack

PostgreSQL (AWS RDS) - for storing all flight data
Python - automates data ingestion and cleaning
Power BI - visualization, interactivity, and calculations
DAX - custom filtering, aggregation, and date metrics
OpenStreetMap - renders the global flight paths
Flightradar24 - source of live aircraft and KML path data
Airfleets.net - additional aircraft details

How It Works

Flight Tracking
- I pull each aircraft’s KML path from Flightradar24.
- Match the plane using tail number to get model, airline, and route metadata.
Data Pipeline
- A Python script fetches and formats the data.
- Pushes data into PostgreSQL using structured schema (Flights, Aircraft, Airports, Routes).
Visualization in Power BI
- The map uses OpenStreetMap and Leaflet tile layers.
- Treemaps show aircraft manufacturer breakdowns.
- Bar charts and line graphs track mileage, airline frequency, and usage trends over time.
- Star schema used to define clean relationships and allow filtering by multiple fields.
Advanced Filtering
- Filter by airport, aircraft type, airline, date range, and mileage bands.
- Automatically updates key stats and visuals.

📊 Key Stats (from June 2022 - February 2025)

44 total flights
20 unique airports
43 different aircraft flown
56,666 miles flown
Top Airlines by Flights: American Airlines, Air Canada, United Airlines