Nearest Plane is a React web app that locates and provides information about the aircraft closest to the user's current location.
This was developed as a personal project after I frequently found myself looking up at the planes flying overhead and wondering what stories they had to tell. My goal in creating Nearest Plane was to provide a quick, intuitive platform for hearing these stories and learning a little more about the planes that fly above our heads every day.
This application is composed of an intuitive React front-end and a minor Express back-end.
Upon arriving on the animated landing page of the React front-end, the users can click a button to begin locating the plane nearest to them. At this point, a request is made to access their location through their browser, which is required to determine their location for the service. After receiving the user's location, a request is made to the Express back-end of the application that uses plane telemetry data from the OpenSky Network to determine which plane is closest to the location of user. The information for this plane is then repackaged and delivered to the React front-end, where it is interpreted and displayed to the user through both an interactive Google Maps element and a textual layout.