Happily Holidays, fellow flyers. This Christmas morning found me gearing up for an early-evening flight from New York to Raleigh to visit family. I was a little nervous, as I always am the day of a flight. But I had the knowledge that I've flown this mercifully short route many times by now, and I also had BumpySkies in my pocket—which, for all its quirks, works a little better these days thanks to all the wonderful feedback I've been receiving lately. In this issue, I'd like to tell you a little more about that.

But first, a reader poll!

A question about approximate forecasts

Currently, BumpySkies is very strict about flight plans. If it hasn't yet been informed of the full route and timetable for an upcoming flight that it otherwise knows about, then BumpySkies displays its "No flight plan yet" screen. As a BumpySkies user myself, I'm very aware that this screen is seldom welcome, and can sometimes stubbornly keep showing up as you're in-line to board, or even belted into your seat.

My question to you: If BumpySkies doesn't have an upcoming flight's plan yet, then should it instead create a forecast using the flight path from the most recent flight between the same airports that it knows about?

The result would be an approximate turbulence forecast, based on live weather data and flight route that's similar to but not identical with your actual route. In effect, you'd see a forecast that's broadly correct about turbulence intensities ahead, but would likely be less accurate in the details about where you can expect the bumps. This approximate forecast would be explicitly marked as such, with the usual note to try again later to see a more accurate forecast using your flight's actual route.

Here is a one-question poll where you can leave your thoughts on this one! I'll leave it up through January.

Sharing works again on desktop

According to my metrics, more than 90 percent of visitors to BumpySkies.com are using a mobile device—which isn't at all surprising, if you think about it. And that helps explain why nobody reported that the "Share this forecast" button didn't do anything at all on desktop! I mean, I didn't notice this either, until yesterday.

This was due to a bug in the underlying HTML, whoops. I fixed it and it works now, and I'm pretty sure I didn't break the mobile-view button in the process. Share away!

All I want for Christmas

Speaking of sharing, the best way you can help BumpySkies today is to tell your friends and fellow flyers about it. There are a handful of other turbulence forecasting tools on the internet, but BumpySkies is one of the originals—first coming online in 2016—and now that I'm actively working on it again, nothing would please me more than to see more of my fellow nervous flyers using it to get a little peace of mind in their upcoming travels.

And you know, one great way to share the news about BumpySkies is to forward this very newsletter to someone who might appreciate it!

If you're seeking a more material way to support BumpySkies, then I humbly direct your attention to the BumpySkies Patreon as well. I pay for the monthly hosting costs to run this service myself, and kindly donations through Patreon do a lot to keep these costs manageable. If you're already a Patreon donor, thank you, sincerely.

But what I treasure the most right now is growth and feedback from the site's users, every bit of which gives me motivation to make BumpySkies the best service I can, and helps direct me about which features—or bugs—need the most attention from me.

Current feedback trends

And speaking of feedback, here's three things I've learned from BumpySkies users since I installed the "Report an issue" button on every forecast page:

BumpySkies is too strict about regional carriers. Right now, if you're on a regional flight that's branded as American Airlines but actually operated by SkyWest, then selecting "American Airlines" as your carrier makes BumpySkies report that it doesn't know about your flight—you need to select "SkyWest" instead. This is just as true for every similar arrangement, where smaller regional airlines operate under the brand of big national ones. This insistence by BumpySkies on naming the precise carrier is far too strict and confusing, and something I look forward to correcting.

BumpySkies can't forecast overseas arrivals (yet). Thanks to your reports, I have learned that the flight-plan data that BumpySkies receives from the FAA simply doesn't have much to say about international arrivals to the US, except for the parts of the flight that are in or near American airspace. I've removed language from the website that implied otherwise, for now. I am actively working on getting access to a richer data sets that will improve BumpySkies's range—and as a subscriber to this newsletter, you'll be the first to hear about it when it happens.

Alaska and Hawaii currently count as "overseas". Multiple folks have asked about providing forecasts between the Lower 48 and all-American Alaska, but as far as BumpySkies is concerned, Alaska is a mythical land somewhere off the edge of the known world. The reasons for this are also due to the data sets I currently work with, which are all bound within a big rectangle around the continental US. As with the international challenge, I am working on expanding my data sets and bringing better coverage for America's more far-flung states.

Keep that wonderful feedback coming! Every report helps me get a better idea how people are using BumpySkies, and how I can make it better in the year ahead.

May your flights this holiday season and beyond be uneventful, or at least tolerable. I'll keep working to make BumpySkies the best tool it can be to make flying a little less stressful for you and me both.