Starting up amidst a shutdown
In this issue of BumpySkies News: a survey about BumpySkies, some updates about the website, and some personal thoughts about flying today. Actually, let's start with the thoughts.
Hello, fellow flyer
I write this one week before flying from New York to Denver, my first visit to that mountain city—and, as it happens, my first flight to anywhere in nearly a year.
I'm very much looking forward to seeing the Denver airport's famously unusual artwork, and then emerging to breathe in the high Colorado air for the very first time. My anticipation has a less pleasant side, too, with awareness that the Rockies are likely to welcome my plane's arrival with an embrace of enthusiastic mountain-wave turbulence. I like to put a positive mental spin on expected bumpy landings, thinking of the destination city as a jocular uncle at a family barbecue, grabbing me in an affectionate headlock. Not very comfortable, but a safe and natural feature of the American air-and-landscape.
However, my mental preparation for this flight is complicated by the strange political realties that surround flying in the U.S. today. Air traffic controllers and TSA staff are, as I write this, working without pay until the government reopens. I know objectively that this doesn't make flying measurably less safe for me: when staffing at a flight's origin or destination falls below a certain threshold, then that flight gets delayed until enough safety workers are present again. But to a nervous flyer, these increased delays make an already anxious activity even more stressful.
And it's in this context that I resume active work on BumpySkies as a tool for me, and for every other nervous flyer who wants or needs to fly across the U.S. today. I might not love all of the motion, but I do love to travel. And even when I don't love to travel, I know what's good for me. I believe intensely that to physically visit a new place, and directly meet its people and experience its culture, is the best way to expand your personal horizons. When things feel fractured, flying away to see distant parts of your home country becomes a strong medicine that builds personal resilience against weird times. I hope that you get a chance to do some of it too.
Please take the BumpySkies survey
I would be very grateful if you spared a couple of minutes to fill out a very short survey about how you found BumpySkies, and how I can improve it, now that I'm actively working on it again.
You can find the survey here. There's only six questions. Five, if you don't count me asking your email address. And even that question is optional!
What's new on BumpySkies
BumpySkies has largely been running on autopilot (beg pardon) since I launched it in 2016. For most of its history, my only significant updates to it have been tweaks to the setup that processes the FAA's flight-plan data stream, which makes changes to its format every few years.
Since returning to active BumpySkies development a couple of weeks ago, most of my work has focused on other things that aren't obvious from the website: upgrading servers, setting up proper coding environments, and checking in with the U.S. government data sources and federal employees that BumpySkies relies on. I'm happy to say that it's all worked out well enough that I've just begun to make some subtle but visible changes to the website.
An updated carrier list
First of all, I added Allegiant as a carrier whose flights BumpySkies can forecast. I'm not sure why it wasn't on the list before, but it is now.
Secondly, I've reworded the actual carrier list on the BumpySkies flight-entry form in order to make more code-shares and common branding more obvious. For example, Air Wisconsin is now listed as "Air Wisconsin (United Express)". I hope that clarifies the choices a bit!
An ancient bug fixed
If you've used BumpySkies more than a little, then you might have noticed this long-standing bug: ever since the website's launch, the first few and last few minutes of every flight were listed as turbulence-free, no matter what.
This happened because the weather data that BumpySkies gets from NOAA only considers altitudes of 1,000 feet and above. During either end of a flight's path, when the plane is below that cutoff while taking off or landing, BumpySkies always saw zero weather, and reported it as such.
I've finally updated this behavior. Now, for those low-altitude takeoff and landing minutes, BumpySkies applies whatever weather conditions it finds directly above the plane's position, in the "floor" of the altitude-range that it has weather data for. I hope that this provides a more realistic report.
The skies ahead
I have plenty of other ideas for improvements to make and even brand new features. I'd love to hear what you think of the changes so far, and if you've got any ideas for what you'd like to see BumpySkies do next. You can tell me directly by replying to this newsletter—or you can fill out that survey I mentioned earlier, if you haven't already.
This is a newsletter, by the way
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Thanks for reading, for using BumpySkies, and for flying with me. See you next time.