·4 min
What is on the exact opposite side of the world?
Dig straight down and you almost certainly hit ocean. The antipode of your city, why most of them are water, and the handful of airports that are near-perfect opposites.
geographydistance
·3 min
How to find every flight you've taken in your Gmail
The search operators that pull a decade of boarding passes out of an inbox in about twenty minutes — including the ones that are archived, in Promotions, or from an airline that no longer exists.
reconstructionlogbook
·3 min
Your I-94 travel history: every US arrival and departure, free
If you have entered the United States on a foreign passport, the US government has been keeping a dated list of your arrivals and departures. It takes about a minute to look up, and it is the most reliable source there is for rebuilding a flight history.
reconstructionlogbook
·4 min
Ask an airline for your entire flight history — with a template you can send
If you have flown a European airline, you have a legal right to a copy of everything it holds about you, including every flight. It costs nothing, they have a month to answer, and most of the work is one email.
reconstructionlogbook
·3 min
Google used to know everywhere you'd been. Here's what's left.
Location History moved onto your phone, the web version is gone, and the default now deletes itself every three months. What that means if you were counting on Google Timeline to rebuild your travel history — and what still works.
reconstructionlogbook
·3 min
Your frequent-flyer statement is a flight log you already own
Loyalty programmes keep a dated, itemised record of every flight they credited you for — often across a dozen airlines at once. Here is how far back each one lets you look, and how to get more when the website runs out.
reconstructionlogbook
·3 min
How to get your flights out of myFlightradar24, FlightMemory and TripIt
Every flight-logging service holds a copy of your history, and every one of them lets you take it — some gracefully, some not. How to export from each, and why you should do it today rather than when you need it.
reconstructionlogbook
·5 min
What's actually worth counting in a flight log
Flights, miles, hours, countries, continents, airports, routes. Seven ways to total up a life of flying, each rewarding something different — and most of them quietly misleading on their own.
logbookmilestones
·4 min
Interrail or fly? What crossing Europe actually costs you in time
The comparison everyone makes is price. The one that actually decides it is door-to-door time, and once you count that properly the crossover point is further out than most people assume.
distancetravel-culture
·5 min
Layovers worth leaving the airport for
A long connection is either six wasted hours or a free half-day in a city you weren't going to visit. Which one it is comes down to four things you can check before you book.
routestravel-culture
·5 min
Thirty-four countries are within three hours of London
Reykjavík is closer than Athens. Tunis is closer than Istanbul. Africa starts at two and a half hours. The actual great circle distances from Heathrow, and what they say about how much map is within reach of a long weekend.
countriesdistance
·5 min
What your flight map says about you
Put every flight you have ever taken on a globe and it will not look like a random spray of lines. It will fall into one of about six shapes, and the shape is more revealing than the total.
logbooktravel-culture
·5 min
The airport codes that make no sense
Why Chicago is ORD, Orlando is MCO, and every airport in Canada starts with Y. A short tour of the three-letter codes that stopped matching their airports decades ago, and the rules that made them that way.
aviationtravel-culture
·5 min
How flight radar actually works, and why your trail vanishes when you land
The live map of the world's air traffic is not radar, is not run by governments, and is largely assembled by volunteers with £20 aerials. A short explanation of ADS-B — and of why none of it remembers that you were on board.
aviationgeography
·4 min
Flight tracker or flight log — which one do you actually want?
Search for a flight tracker and you get two completely different kinds of app, solving two completely different problems. One tells you where an aircraft is now. The other tells you where you have been. Here is how to tell which one you were looking for.
logbookaviation
·3 min
The world's longest flights, and what 18 hours in the air actually feels like
Singapore to New York is nearly 15,350 km without landing. Here's the current ranking of the longest non-stop routes, why they exist at all, and what a day and a half in a seat does to you.
long-haulroutes
·3 min
Why your flight to Tokyo goes over the Arctic
The map on the seat-back screen looks wrong. It isn't — the map is lying, and the aircraft is telling the truth. A short explanation of great circle routes and why the shortest path is a curve.
routesgeography
·5 min
How many times around the Earth is a million miles?
A million miles is 40.2 laps of the planet. The full conversion table — miles and kilometres to laps of Earth — plus how to work out your own flying total.
distancemilestones
·4 min
How to reconstruct every flight you've ever taken
Even the ones from 2009. A practical method for rebuilding a complete flight history from email, photos, passport stamps and loyalty statements — in about an evening.
reconstructionlogbook
·3 min
Counting countries: what actually counts
Does a layover count? A cruise stop? Vatican City? Travellers have argued about this for decades. Here are the established rule sets, and a suggestion for which one to use.
countriesmilestones
·3 min
The best window seats in the world, by route
Which side of the aircraft to book for Greenland's ice sheet, the Alps, Manhattan on approach, and the Himalaya. A practical guide to sitting on the correct side.
routeshow-to