I’d just like to point out the existence of a website I just discovered, Flight Connections, which features an interactive map with every flight path that exists. Choose a departure city and the map populates with all available flight paths, then choose your arrival city and a sidebar populates with airlines and possible travel days. Type in your dates and with one click, a SkyScanner window opens with airfares and booking information. It’s pretty magical – and so obvious, I don’t know why it never occurred to me to search for a site like this before today.

Whenever I’ve needed this service in the past, like when I was trying to game the airline miles system, I’ve always just Googled individual cities, i.e. “City X direct flights,” and then triangulated as needed. I could have saved so much time – and had so much more fun – using this little tool. On the other hand, I’ve just spent an hour looking at random departure-arrival combinations (Cairo to Addis, Addis to Nairobi, Nairobi to Lamu…) and fantasizing about future vacations there, so maybe on the balance it is actually a time-waster.

Anchors aweigh! (Or more appropriately, wheels up!)