rmyadsk

The very latest!

I noticed the other day that this thread is over seven and a half years old! We've seen many changes - I think mostly for the worse - in our high-flying world since then. Unfortunately we haven't seen many changes at all in the Flying Fish program. And it's about time, but I've finally decided to throw my hat in the ring for its successor: greatcircles. I'm building it on the platform where it will be most useful to everyone - the Web.

You can see an early preview right here. Check this post for more info.

Flying Fish

You can get Flying Fish (for Windows) here.

An updated airport datafile (June 16, 2011) is available here. Just 'save as' into your Flying Fish program directory.

As always...

Feedback is always appreciated and desired, positive or negative, here or privately via Email. Thanks for your support!


Ryan M. Yadsko
[email protected]

mymiles2go

Very cool.

Neat little utility. Out of curiosity, where are you pulling the mileages from? The only reason I ask, is that when I'm trying miles in relation to UA flights, they are off by a few (usually less than 10 miles), wasn't sure which source you were using for the segments.

Anyways, very cool little utility. Thanks! I look forward to the updates.

vasantn

Really neat -- thank you!

------------------
Vasant

sonofapilot

Great tool. Many thanks!

rmyadsk

The mileages are calculated on the fly with latitudes and longitudes from the airport codes the user enters. There are simply too many point-to-point distances to put into a database, so the geodesic ("great circle") distance is calculated. This allows for an infinite number of itineraries and various segments, and as long as lat/long information exists for both airports, a distance will be calculated. The lat/long information comes from DAFIF, the Digital Aeronautical Flight Information File. I'm not sure what the airlines use to generate their distances, and there is no "master list" of latitudes and longitudes for this purpose (I spent many hours looking) - DAFIF is the closest match.

One of the interesting things about developing the program is that I got a crash course in trigonometry while programming it. One widely accepted formula for calculating a geodesic distance is as follows:

Origin: lat1, lon1
Destination: lat2, lon2

theta = lon2 - lon1
dist = ((acos(sin(lat1) × sin(lat2) + cos(lat1) × cos(lat2) × cos(theta)))+pi) × 6371.2

The result is in kilometers, which is converted to statute miles. The value of PI is as accurate the the visual basic dbl (double) value allows; it is calculated when the application is loaded by 4# × Atn(1#).

I am very open to suggestions about formulae / calculations which will bring the totals in line with the airlines', as this is a primary goal of the program.

Another thing I would like suggestions on especially is the display of the itinerary summary at the bottom of the screen. I was thinking of a red/yellow/green scheme, like a traffic light, based on the cost per elite-qualifying mile. What would be a good way to display this (i.e. catch the user's attention but not be obnoxious or annoying)?

Coming soon: program-specific presets - i.e. select "Northwest Platinum Elite - first class" from a dropdown menu and class bonus becomes a 50% elite-qualifying bonus, status bonus becomes a 125% non-EQM bonus, etc.

------------------
Flying Fish: the ultimate Mileage Run tool?

EnhancedByCO

There's a small section about calculating great circle distances in the FAQ of the Great Circle Mapper web site.

The main issue with using the formula you give above is, as the FAQ points out, the formula assumes the Earth is a perfect sphere, which is not quite the case. Thus the small error in calculating distances.

stevelb

Program will not run for me. I am getting the following error message:
Run-time error "3706":
ADO could not find the specified provider.

MartinElk

Great, easy-to-use program!

I found a bug in the distance calculations:

It's showing 5714 miles from SLC-PSP, and 5999 miles from PSP-SMF. (PSP=Palm Springs, CA)

Thanks for this new tool!

MartinElk

One more quick one:

It did not recognize LHR as a valid airport, but LON did work.

rmyadsk

PSP must be used for a different airport. I will correct it.

Also I did not have time to put in LHR and several others I wanted to, IATA codes not included in the database I adapted those codes from. The "datamaker" script which I use to generate the master database is at home - while I am in Hawaii on business for a while.

Thanks,

Ryan

------------------
Flying Fish: the ultimate Mileage Run tool?

rmyadsk

ADO is the method by which the program calls the database (via SQL queries). I would reocmmend downloading the Visual Basic 6 runtimes and reinstalling to ensure all files are up-to-date.

Try this link:

Visual Basic 6 runtimes from Microsoft

------------------
Flying Fish: the ultimate Mileage Run tool?

mymiles2go

Going back to the mileage thing... I believe the vast majority of the airlines base thier mileages off of the IATA distances - I wonder if there is a downloadable distance database of city pairs. Might be a good way to minimize the differences.

davistev

Great job on the beta.

Brian-AAFlyer

Useful tool, its given me an interesting twist on a MR.. its also making it clear that my preferred MRs are less 'effort' but cost more than 2c a M

MGL

Most excellent!