Flight Map Creator (FMC)

This Python 3.x module contains all the functions required to create a map of the world with all of your flights overlaid and all of the countries that you have visited shaded in. It also contains an example input file so that you know what is required to make it work too. The format for a line is departure airport IATA code, arrival airport IATA code, year of flight, Business/Pleasure. Whilst the flights do not have to be in order in the CSV file the first flight does have to have occurred in the first year.

Usage

FMC can be run very easily, below is an example (also found in example.py).

#!/usr/bin/env python3

# Import modules ...
import fmc

# Run function ...
fmc.run(
    "example.csv",
    extraCountries = [
        "Denmark",
        "Germany",
        "Ireland",
        "Myanmar",
        "Nepal",
        "Netherlands",
        "Russia",
        "Switzerland",
    ],
    notVisited = [
        "Hong Kong",
        "Singapore",
    ],
    renames = {
        "Czech Republic" : "Czechia",
        "United States" : "United States of America",
    }
)

You must pass it the path to a CSV file containing all of the flights that you have taken. Additionally, you can optionally pass it a list of other countries that you have visited but that you might not have flown to (extraCountries). Furthermore, you can optionally pass it a list of countries that you have not visited, such as those containing transfer airports (notVisited). FMC uses two different databases of countries behind the scenes and (very annoyingly) they use different names for some countries. If any of these are ones that you have visited then you can correct FMC's behaviour by explicitly providing a dictionary of countries to be renamed (renames).

Example Output

FMC will create a PNG in the directory of the CSV file. Below is the result for the included file example.csv.

FMC will also print out a list of countries which it thinks that you have visited.

Dependencies

FMC requires the following Python modules to be installed and available in your PYTHONPATH.

• cartopy
• matplotlib
• pyguymer3

FMC uses some Global Self-Consistent Hierarchical High-Resolution Geography resources and some Natural Earth resources via the cartopy module. If they do not exist on your system then cartopy will download them for you in the background. Consequently, a working internet connection may be required the first time you run FMC.

To Do

• The useNaturalEarthAirports branch will likely remain un-merged forever. Due to an open issue in Natural Earth, many major airports are missing from the Shape file. The ticket has been open since July 2017 and shows no sign of being closed.