Off-Topic: The Airline Geek Post

I know it may be hard to tell, but this is a picture my dad took of me, just about to enter into a UPS MD-11.
First off, this post has almost nothing to do with class. It is about airplanes, airlines, flying, and traveling, which is definitely connected to class (and could possibly be helpful for your travel guide), but really, this is an excuse for me to be a huge nerd about airplanes. If you are looking for the class recap from last class, please scroll down to the next post.

Okay. So as you have probably figured out, I am really into airplanes and airlines. I showed you my FlightMemory page during class, and I wanted to tell you a little more about how to make it, what you can do with it, and some other great links of interest if you are into this whole thing.

Story time: I first got really into planes when my dad would take me and my siblings to the airport to watch them when we were growing up. There are a few great places out at the airport - we used to park and watch them come in, then run through the parking lot, trying to outrace the planes. Pizza was also usually involved, which definitely helped too. Basically, it was a good excuse to get out of the house and hang out.

I lost that excitement about planes for a long time after we gradually stopped going, due to general life activities. I did however, need a summer job during college, and so when I saw a clipping from the Oregonian about a job at Evergreen EAGLE, I applied and went to work, in the summer of 2006. Ever since then, I've worked on and off (mostly in the summers and during the winter breaks). It's an amazing job that lets me be outside, work out, and also get to be up close and personal with some of the biggest pieces of machinery in the world. Evergreen was contracted for the last couple of years to service the Lufthansa flight from Portland to Frankfurt, Germany, which I spoke about in class today. In the course of my work on that, I did just about everything you could imagine. I worked in the bag room. I loaded bags. I cleaned bathrooms. I vacuumed floors. I cleaned seats (and trust me, that is a dirty job). I put down pillows and blankets. I drove cargo. I marshaled planes in and out.

At UPS, where I still work every so often (it's down to about once a month, usually on a Friday, because I am so busy most other days), my specialty is "topside," where the big cargo containers are loaded in, and I am part of the crew that pushes and locks them into place. Here's a picture of what that looks like (the inside of a UPS Airbus A300):


I also marshall planes in and out (marshallers are the people outside that have the light up wands that direct traffic - which I think is just about the coolest job ever, besides being a teacher).

So now you know a little bit about what I do in my free time. Now let's get on to the links.

You know about FlightMemory.com. This is one of my favorite sites out there. You do have to sign up to create an account (it's free). Then you have to enter your flight information for each flight in on the "FlightData" page. Here is what my FlightData page looks like for the most recent flights I've taken:


Now, you can see that I have a whole lot of information on there. Not only do I have the origin and destination airports, but I have the airlines, flight number, aircraft type, tail number (which means that actual, particular aircraft I flew), seat, duration of flight, and a whole lot more. So the question is, how?

To begin this investigation into your own flights, try to find any old boarding passes you may have laying around. They will be incredibly helpful, because they say the airline, the date, and the flight number. I try to save all of my old boarding passes - they are in a binder that I will bring in again next class.

Okay, so say you know where you went, when you went, and the flight number (or maybe you are missing some of that too). Here is an EXCELLENT site to fill in the gaps:

Airline On-Time Statistics - This is a US government run site (which, unfortunately, means that it is only useful for flights within the US), because the FAA requires major airlines to report on what they do each day. To find what you need, go down to "detailed statistics" and either click on Arrivals (if you know the city that you were flying to) or Departures (if you know where you left from). Let's use my case of the Alaska Airlines Flight 483, which my brother and I took from San Diego to Seattle, coming back from the Holiday Bowl during Winter Break.

I will click Departures (because there are not that many Alaska flights departing San Diego). I will then choose "All Statistics" on the next screen. I enter in the origin airport of San Diego (SAN), and the airline (Alaska - AS). Then I select my date that I flew, which was December 31st, 2008 (be careful to get all of those dates right!). By clicking submit, I am greeted with a list of Alaska flights that left San Diego on the 31st of December. Look! There is flight 483! The tail number is N583AS, which can be viewed online here: Airliners.net - Alaska Airlines Boeing 737-800 N583AS.

Pretty cool, right? There are several other sites that are fantastic:

The Great Circle Mapper - this will let you calculate the distance flying from one place to another, anywhere in the world. Here's what this would look like if there were to be a non-stop flight from Portland to Lagos, Nigeria: Great Circle Mapper: PDX-LOS. That is a long plane ride - 7540 miles!

I talked a little bit in class about Kayak.com, which is by far my favorite place to actually buy tickets, because there are so many options (and because the cheapest is easy to search for).

Also, check out FlightAware.com - Portland International (PDX) to see a great representation of all the flights that are in the air around Portland at any given time! This is definitely my favorite site to track planes, like if I need to pick up someone at the airport, or I want to know immediately how long I was in the air for. Here's the most current flight from that San Diego-Seattle route that I took in December: FlightAware: Alaska Airlines Flight 483.

Finally, using all these resources, make your FlightMemory page and also, an Airliners.net photo album! Just search for the tail number in the search box - they have just about every major carrier's aircraft from everywhere around the world. Seriously, that site is insane. Here's what my photo album of aircraft that I have actually flown on is: Airliners.net - Aircraft I've Flown On.

I also have an album of actual aircraft that I've worked on (which I just updated tonight, because I just worked on a new bird - N134UP): Airliners.net - Aircraft I've Worked On.

Let me know if you need any help with this! You definitely discover some pretty amazing things. For instance: I once flew on United Airlines N591UA (from Portland to Chicago in 1996), the exact same plane that was later hijacked on September 11th, 2001 and eventually driven into the ground in Pennsylvania - the flight that the movie "United 93" is about. Absolutely crazy, huh?

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Some very basics about airlines:

All American airline tail numbers start with N. All airports in the world have a three letter code. These can sometimes be very confusing. For instance: Zack, in your FlightMemory, you have a flight from PDX to STP - which is Saint Paul, Minnesota. It would be very hard for you to know that you almost definitely actually flew into Minneapolis-Saint Paul, which has the code of MSP.

A few other big airports: In the Los Angeles area alone, there is LAX (the main, huge one), SNA (Orange County), LGB (Long Beach), ONT (Ontario - where a lot of our UPS jets fly to from Portland), and BUR (Burbank). I've been to every LA airport except ONT, which is the reason why that area is so cluttered on my FlightMemory map. In the New York City area, there is John F. Kennedy International (JFK), LaGuardia (LGA), and Newark-New Jersey (EWR). I've only ever flown into EWR, though I really want to go to JFK someday!

Seattle is SEA (easy). Most are fairly common sense. Here are some that are not:
Chicago's main airport is O'Hare, which is ORD.
New Orleans is MSY (and I have no idea why).
Detriot is DTW.
Houston is IAH.
Kansas City is MCI.
Orlando is MCO.
Washington DC is either IAD (the big one, in Virginia) or DCA (Reagan National, in the capital).

Here's a good site for all the big airports within the United States: USA Today - Current Delays.

All airlines have a two letter (or a letter and a number) code. I won't go over too many, but here are some main ones:

AS - Alaska Airlines
QX - Horizon Air (which is owned by Alaska, but operates by itself)
WN - Southwest
B6 - JetBlue
F9 - Frontier
UA - United
AA - American
DL - Delta
NW - Northwest (merging right now with Delta)
US - US Airways

All of this information can be easily found on Wikipedia, if you are interested. Let me know if you can't find something, I would love to help out!

Finally, a few essentials about aircraft in general. Basically, there are two main builders of aircraft in the world. Boeing, which is based in the United States and has an enormous base and building plant in the Seattle area, and Airbus, which is owned by a group of European nations, which is based in Toulouse, France.

Boeing makes airplanes that start with 7 and end with 7. Like, the 737, 747, 757 (my all time favorite, by the way)... you get the point. Around Portland, the 737 is by far the most common. Both Alaska and Southwest own entirely Boeing 737 fleets now. Boeing's new aircraft (that keeps getting delayed, but hopefully should be out this year) is the 787 Dreamliner.

Airbus makes airplanes that start with "A3..." For instance, the equivalent of a Boeing 737 for an Airbus is an A320 - the kind of plane that just landed in the Hudson River a couple of weeks ago. Lufthansa flies an Airbus A330 into Portland currently - a downgrade from the A340 that I used to work on. You may have heard about the big new Airbus aircraft - the A380, which is an ENORMOUS double decker.

Okay, I think that is enough. I would be surprised if anyone actually read all that. But hey, I get into it! Have a fantastic weekend everyone! :-)