Sharing my Flight Generator/Database Tool

[MDF86 123]

All

 

Over the last few weeks I've been working on a nifty little Excel document that will generate a random flight for you, based on a database that I have put together of over 5,000 real world flights. I put this database together mainly because I'm very indecisive about where I want to fly to and from, and also it's a great way of flying routes and airlines that you wouldn't think to fly!

 

Before you read on - you should know that this tool will really only be useful for those who fly in Europe with B737/A320 airlines, though there are also some B757 operators included.

 

OK, so if you're still interested:

 

This document contains over 5,000 routes, of which I would say over 95% are true to life. What I mean by that is that they give you an ORIGIN, DESTINATION, AIRLINE and EQUIPMENT TYPE that are used in real life. In order to populate this massive list, I have taken information from the Wikipedia page of each of the 67 airports I have included in the listing over the last two weeks, so it should be hopefully pretty up to date.

 

The airports included are those which there is either a good quality payware airport out for now, or will be in future, as I like to fly into and out of good quality scenery. I don't own all of these add on airports yet but own a fair few of them and am adding to it all the time.

 

There are a number of defunct airlines that I have included, for example Air 2000 and First Choice Airlines. For airlines like these, they were amalgamated into companies like Thomson and Thomas Cook, and so for those airlines, I have used the current routes of those airlines. For others who I am less familiar with such as Air Holland, Air Slovakia etc, I have used a bit of Google and a bit of artistic license in determining their routes!

 

This is not intended to be a 100% accurate and complete list of routes. There are routes/airlines included that are there just because I want them to be. For example, you'll notice there are several Emirates A320 routes included when they don't even operate the A320. This is because I'm hoping someone will paint an Emirates A320 when the FSL A320 is out and I can fly all over Europe from the wonderful OMDB scenery! :lol:

 

But, as I said, I would say around 95% of these combinations of FROM/TO/AIRLINE/EQUIPMENT are true to life.

 

HOW IT WORKS

 

There are two tabs in the spreadsheet:

 

FLIGHT

This tab is the "front page" and gives you the flight information. The button in the top right - "GENERATE FLIGHT" - when clicked, will generate you a new flight, with departure and arrival airport, departure time and even a flight number. Of course, if you don't like that flight you can simply click for another, and another. The page is formatted to fit on a single sheet of A4 so you can print it, and contains plenty of space for you to make notes about fuel, routing, etc.

 

You will need macros enabled in order to use the button. If you don't want to/can't enable macros, you will need to press F9 or click into a cell in order to generate a new flight. Please also note that every time you click into a cell, or type anything, or resize anything in Excel, a new number will be generated in the random number generator and will therefore generate a new flight, so either print or note down your flight before you do so!

 

DATA

This tab is the "brains" and contains all of the information in order for the flight tab to work. Essentially the flight tab contains a random number generator and pulls through the information from whichever number it picks out of the number of entries available. The data tab can be manipulated and tweaked to your own liking in order to personalise it with just the airports/airlines you want, and of course you can add to it/expand it to suit your fleet of aircraft and liveries.

 

PLEASE NOTE I AM PROVIDING THIS "AS IS". THE TOOL IS PERFECT FOR MY REQUIREMENTS BUT MAY NEED SOME TWEAKING BASED ON THE AIRPORTS AND AIRLINES YOU WANT INCLUDED.

 

QUESTIONS

 

Q: HOW DO I REMOVE AN AIRLINE / AIRPORT THAT I DON'T WANT?

A: SIMPLY FILTER COLUMNS B-G ON THE DATA TAB AND REMOVE THE ENTRIES RELATING TO THE AIRLINE OR AIRPORT YOU WANT TO DELETE. BE CAREFUL IF YOU ARE DELETING ANYTHING IN THE FIRST 200 ROWS OR SO, AS YOU MAY INADVERTENTLY DELETE SOME OF THE AIRPORT/AIRLINE/TIME LOOKUP DATA IN COLUMNS H-O. ONCE YOU HAVE DELETED ROWS, YOU WILL NEED TO DRAG DOWN THE NUMBERS IN COLUMN A TO THE BOTTOM IN ORDER TO RESTORE SEQUENTIAL NUMBERS. THE ONLY REMAINING THING TO DO THEN IS TO CHANGE THE LAST NUMBER IN THE FORMULA IN CELL "F1" ON THE FLIGHT TAB TO WHATEVER THE LAST NUMBER IS IN THE ROWS OF DATA.

 

Q: HOW DO I ADD AN AIRLINE / AIRPORT THAT ISN'T INCLUDED?

A: TO ADD AN AIRLINE YOU JUST NEED TO ENTER THE CODE, AIRLINE NAME AND EQUIPMENT IN COLUMNS K-M. TO ADD AN AIRPORT YOU JUST ENTER THE ICAO, NAME AND COUNTRY IN COLUMNS H-J. THEN WHEN YOU ADD ROUTE DETAILS IN COLUMNS B-D, THE REST OF THE DATA WILL AUTOMATICALLY POPULATE IN COLUMNS E-G. THE ONLY REMAINING THING TO DO THEN IS TO CHANGE THE LAST NUMBER IN THE FORMULA IN CELL "F1" ON THE FLIGHT TAB TO WHATEVER THE LAST NUMBER IS IN THE ROWS OF DATA.

 

Q: WHY DID YOU DO ALL THIS?

A: BECAUSE I'M A MASSIVE NERD AND I LOVE SPREADSHEETS AND DATA :biggrin:

 

I hope this tool is useful to someone anyway! Happy simming! The tool can be downloaded from here (it won't let me attach an excel file to the post).

 

http://www.sendspace.com/file/o1bbqm

[MDF86 123]

No one interested in this?

[megs8888 20]

Thanks ill have a look appreciate it.

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

[Gason 6]

Nice, and thanks for sharing!

[ZKOKQ 984]

Just had a look, very good work Martin. Thanks for sharing

[groentesoep 22]

I just downloaded it and I must say I really like it. I can only imagine how much work has gone in to this....

Thank you very much for sharing!

[ega 98]

Thanks Martin for sharing. It is very helpful.

[MDF86 123]

No problems, glad it can be of benefit!

[ApacheHunter 4]

Actually, I've been looking for something like this for the last couple of weeks, so I've declared you my hero of today!

 

Is there a way to lock certain parameters, like the departure airport or the airline? Let's say I decided to fly an Easyjet flight, but I'm just looking for a random destination to fly to. Is this possible with your file?

[Q_flyer 766]

Excellent work Martin.

 

I will use this a LOT when I return to Europe and the AXE, from my current sabatical in Orbx FTX CRM. :smile:

[MDF86 123]

Actually, I've been looking for something like this for the last couple of weeks, so I've declared you my hero of today!

 

Is there a way to lock certain parameters, like the departure airport or the airline? Let's say I decided to fly an Easyjet flight, but I'm just looking for a random destination to fly to. Is this possible with your file?

Funnily enough I actually included a couple of pivot tables with this originally which did just that but deleted them in the end as I didn't want to confuse people who were less familiar with excel. But it's easy to add yourself!

 

If you go to the data tab and highlight the entire of columns E, F and G, then click on insert pivot table then click ok. This will put the table in a new sheet.

 

Then on the field list on the right hand side of the new sheet, drag "airline" into the report filter box below, then drag "from" into the row labels box, then "to" into the row labels box below "from".

 

What you now have in your pivot table is a selectable drop down of airlines. Then when you choose an airline you'll see everywhere in the data that they fly, and from where.

 

If you have trouble with it let me know and I'll reupload it with the table included.

The benefit of pivot tabling for this is that you can quickly switch airline and from, so if you want to see all flights from a particular airport, by airline, you can

[gman1986 14]

Nice work Martin cheers!

[MDF86 123]

Nice work Martin cheers!

You're welcome!

[BadKarmaPT 48]

Great work! I'll be using this a lot. Thank you for sharing.

[N312RB 0]

Is this still available?  Or does anyone have a working link?