展示HN：我的航班会有Starlink吗？
嘿，HN，如果你有幸乘坐过配备Starlink的航班，你就会明白这种技术的热度。它确实有效！<p>然而，Starlink在航班上的可用性并不稳定，难以预测。因此，我们建立了一个数据库，涵盖所有已推出Starlink（不仅仅是试点）的航空公司，并开发了一个航班搜索工具来进行预测。只需输入航班号和日期，我们就能根据飞机类型和尾号估算航班上配备Starlink的可能性。<p>如果你没有即将到来的旅行，也可以查找特定航线，看看哪些航班提供Starlink服务。你可以在这里找到相关信息：<a href="https://stardrift.ai/starlink">https://stardrift.ai/starlink</a>。<p>-<p>我还想补充一些关于这个工具如何工作的说明。我们在回答查询时会依次检查三个方面：<p>- 这家航空公司是否提供Starlink？<p>- 这架飞机是否配备Starlink？<p>- <i>这架特定的飞机</i>是否配备Starlink？<p>目前，只有少数几家航空公司提供Starlink：联合航空、夏威夷航空、阿拉斯加航空、法国航空、卡塔尔航空、JSX航空以及其他少数几家。因此，如果一架飞机由其他航空公司运营，我们可以立即给出否定答案。<p>接下来，我们会检查正在飞行的具体机型。航空公司通常会提前发布设备分配信息，并且它们也在逐步将Starlink推广到每架飞机上。因此，我们知道，例如，所有JSX的E145飞机都配备了Starlink，而法国航空的A320飞机则没有配备Starlink。（你可以在<a href="https://stardrift.ai/starlink/fleet-summary">https://stardrift.ai/starlink/fleet-summary</a>查看我们数据的总结，尽管实时逻辑中有一些规则未在此编码。）<p>如果机型完全匹配，我们可以自信地告诉你你的航班将配备Starlink。然而，在大多数情况下，航空公司仅对该机型进行了<i>部分</i>升级。在这种情况下，我们需要更深入地查找，确定<i>哪一架</i>飞机将飞往你的航线。<p>我们可以通过查找“尾号”（可以把它想象成飞机的车牌）来做到这一点。<i>不幸的是</i>，尾号通常是在航班起飞前几天才会分配。因此，在那之前，我们能做的最好是计算你的飞机被分配到配备Starlink的飞机的概率。<p>为此，我们必须建立一个飞机尾号与Starlink状态的映射。在这里，我要感谢那些在线航空爱好者，他们维护着详细的电子表格和论坛帖子来追踪这些数据！据我了解，<i>他们</i>通常从对Starlink推广充满热情的航空公司员工那里获取这些数据，因此这是一个可靠且经常更新的来源。我们的大部分工作是寻找每个来源，规范它们的格式，建立一个可靠且负责任的系统来提取这些数据，并将它们与我们的其他数据源结合起来。<p>基本上，这就是一个数据规范化的问题！我曾在金融数据系统方面工作，惊讶于这个问题的相似性。<p>-<p>Starlink本身也是一项相当酷的技术。我还写了一篇博客文章（<a href="https://stardrift.ai/blog/why-is-starlink-so-good">https://stardrift.ai/blog/why-is-starlink-so-good</a>），讲述了为什么它比其他所有飞机Wi-Fi选项要好得多。从高层次来看，这一切的可能性源于如今火箭发射成本的降低，这真是太酷了。<p>其性能非常出色，因此在可能的情况下，围绕它来规划你的航班是非常值得的。目前，在美国，你最好的选择是联合航空的区域航班和JSX/夏威夷航空。国际航班方面，卡塔尔航空是最佳选择（尽管显然现在不是），法国航空则排在第二位。不过，随着更多航空公司逐步推出，我们的数据库将会不断更新！
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Hey HN, If you’ve been lucky enough to be on a flight with Starlink, you understand the hype. It actually works!<p>However, its availability on flights is patchy and hard to predict. So we built a database of all airlines that have rolled out Starlink (beyond just a trial), and a flight search tool to predict it. Plug in a flight number and date, and we'll estimate the likelihood of Starlink on-board based on aircraft type and tail number.<p>If you don’t have any trips coming up, you can also look up specific routes to see what flights offer Starlink. You can find it here: <a href="https://stardrift.ai/starlink">https://stardrift.ai/starlink</a> .<p>-<p>I wanted to add a few notes on how this works too. There are three things we check, in order, when we answer a query:<p>- Does this airline have Starlink?<p>- Does this aircraft body have Starlink?<p>- Does <i>this specific aircraft</i> have Starlink?<p>Only a few airlines at all have Starlink right now: United, Hawaiian, Alaskan, Air France, Qatar, JSX, and a handful of others. So if an aircraft is operated by any other airline, we can issue a blanket no immediately.<p>Then, we check the actual body that's flying on the plane. Airlines usually publish equipment assignments in advance, and they're also rolling out Starlink body-by-body. So we know, for instance, that all JSX E145s have Starlink and that none of Air France's A320s have Starlink. (You can see a summary of our data at <a href="https://stardrift.ai/starlink/fleet-summary">https://stardrift.ai/starlink/fleet-summary</a>, though the live logic has a few rules not encoded there.)<p>If there's a complete match at the body type level, we can confidently tell you your flight will have Starlink. However, in most cases, the airline has only rolled out a <i>partial</i> upgrade to that aircraft type. In that case, we need to drill down a little more and figure out exactly <i>which</i> plane is flying on your route.<p>We can do this by looking up the 'tail number' (think of it as a license plate for the plane). <i>Unfortunately</i>, the tail number is usually only assigned a few days before a flight. So, before that, the best we can do is calculate the probability that your plane will be assigned an aircraft with Starlink enabled.<p>To do this, we had to build a mapping of aircraft tails to Starlink status. Here, I have to thank online airline enthusiasts who maintain meticulous spreadsheets and forum threads to track this data! As I understand it, <i>they</i> usually get this data from airline staff who are enthusiastic about Starlink rollouts, so it's a reliable, frequently updated source. Most of <i>our</i> work was finding each source, normalizing their formats, building a reliable & responsible system to pull them in, and then tying them together with our other data sources.<p>Basically, it's a data normalization problem! I used to work on financial data systems and I was surprised how similar this problem was.<p>-<p>Starlink itself is also a pretty cool technology. I also wrote a blog post (<a href="https://stardrift.ai/blog/why-is-starlink-so-good">https://stardrift.ai/blog/why-is-starlink-so-good</a>) on why it's so much better than all the other aircraft wifi options out there. At a high level, it's only possible because rocket launches are so cheap nowadays, which is incredibly cool.<p>The performance is great, so it's well worth planning your flights around it where possible. Right now, your best bet in the US is on United regional flights and JSX/Hawaiian. Internationally, Qatar is the best option (though obviously not right now), with Air France a distance second. This will change throughout the year as more airlines roll it out though, and we'll keep our database updated!