A mile high but on the ground
A couple of new BumpySkies features, and a couple of stony-faced bighorn sheep.
Greetings, fellow flyers. In this issue of BumpySkies News, I announce a couple of new border-crossing BumpySkies features. But first, some reflections about my own most recent flight.
A gut feeling, and four big horns
I got lucky with my one-week Denver trip, with my westward flight happening right before the USDOT-mandated flight reductions kicked in, and the federal shutdown coming to a close in time for my trip back. I was spared the painful delays that I anticipated in my previous newsletter—and if you haven't been so lucky with your own travels this month, you have my sympathy.
I did face another delay on my flight back home, though: after pushing back from the gate, the plane idled for some time on the tarmac before the crew announced that something "just didn't feel right" during the pre-flight checklist. We all trudged back to the terminal so that an engineering team could spend an hour examining and testing the 737's hydraulic systems. Muted cheers greeted the announcement that the engineers had pronounced the ship airworthy, and so we marched back on board for a swift takeoff, arriving at LaGuardia with the jet stream at our backs and no further delay.
An inconvenience, yes—and, for a nervous flyer, an unwelcome complication that can add to airborne worries. But for me, these fears felt more than countered by gratitude for an air-travel culture that always puts passenger safety first—even over passenger convenience and happiness, and even when the safety concern is only a gut feeling among the crew. While nobody likes getting home hours later than planned—or being accidentally invited to ponder the many ways that machines can fail—I absolutely appreciated the reminder about how safe modern air travel is, at every level, thanks to the teams of experts who make sure that those failures never happen.
Anyway, yes, I had a great time in Denver. I wrote last time about how much I value flight for expanding my personal horizons through discoveries and experiences only possible in person, even if don't always love the flight itself. And of all the photos I took from all the marvelous adventures I had in the Centennial City, the one I'll share with you today is of the stone guardians flanking a side entrance to the Byron White federal courthouse.
You see, here in New York where I live, we like to class up important entryways by dropping a couple of lions in front of them, testifying to New York's own sense of regality. Denver, of course, has a different sense of self-worth. What representative animal sentries do the people of the Mile-High City choose, after generations of thriving hardily amid the punishingly thin, dry air and daily 40-degree temperature swings of Colorado?
Bighorn sheep.
These kinds of encounters? This is why I fly.
New features: sharing, and border-crossing
I'm happy to announce a couple of features I've added to BumpySkies during the first half of November.
Easier and prettier forecast sharing
Flight forecasts now have a Share this forecast button that appears above the forecast map. Click or tap it to bring up a little menu of sharing options (if your browser supports that sort of thing) or to copy the forecast's URL to to your clipboard (if it doesn't).
I've paired this new button with improvements to how forecasts represent themselves on link-preview cards seen on social media or chat apps. You can see this in action at the top of this Mastodon thread about my flight back from Denver. I was able to add that pretty picture by simply pasting the forecast's URL into the post.
I hope you find this a fun way to share your travels with friends! If you do try it out, I'd love to know what you think of it.
Better support for Canada and Mexico
If you've used BumpySkies within the last few days, you've likely noticed that the menu of supported airlines is now both longer and grouped into three countries, including Canadian and Mexican carriers. A litte more subtle is how the random-flight display feature sometimes shows flights between the U.S. and Canada or Mexico.
This is a baby step towards the much more complete international coverage I'd like BumpySkies to support someday, but it's a step nonetheless, making use of the weather and flight data that I already have access to. It's not perfect; in particular, flights to Mexico City and other destinations far away from the U.S. border tend to have their forecasts cut off too early. I plan to improve this presently.
Since the FAA data that BumpySkies uses is unsurprisingly U.S.-centric, this feature supports only flights either departing from or arriving at the United States; it can't provide forecasts for domestic flights that happen entirely within Canada or Mexico.
If you use this feature to select carriers outside of the U.S., let me know if I'm missing any! I chose the 12 airlines that I added—six per country, three major and three regional—based on the FAA data that I have.
Survey updates
The BumpySkies survey for winter 2025 is still open, and has received about a quarter of the 50 responses I'd like to collect. I happen to know through the magic of Google Analytics that BumpySkies has a lot more than 50 visitors every month, so I hope to meet this goal before the year ends.
The responses I've received so far have already helped nudge where I've been putting my attention on this project. Some of you have used the survey to ask directly for better Canadian airline support, and so there it is.
You can help by telling your friends about BumpySkies! I've received so much positive energy since picking this passion project back up in October, and I very much plan to keep growing and improving the service in the seasons to come. As always, you can share your thoughts about this service by replying to this newsletter, or by writing me at jmac@jmac.org. And, yes, by taking that survey, if you haven't already done so!
Your friend in reluctant flight,
Jason