Plotting airplane GPS data in Google Earth

For fun, I collected some GPS data from the takeoff and landing of my most recent flight home. I used the now defunct Xtrail app to save GPS data from my iPhone to a GPX file, which I then opened with Google Earth.

Path of takeoff from JFK airport

Takeoff from New York JFK

Path of landing at SFO airport

Landing at San Francisco. The data got messed up in the middle because Xtrail kept crashing. Fortunately, it’s not very noticeable from this perspective.

You can then run the flight simulator to see how well you can follow the line!

My airplane nearly flips over

Hint: I suck.

There are a couple tricks to make this work better:

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