Inspiration
Global trade moves long before it shows up in official data. While platforms like Bloomberg Terminal track cargo ships, air cargo remains an underutilized signal, despite carrying the most time-sensitive and high-value goods in the global economy. Aircraft movements often reflect changes in supply chains, geopolitics, and demand weeks before those changes appear in reports, earnings, or prices. We saw an opportunity to turn real-time air cargo movements into actionable economic intelligence.
What it does
AeroIndex is a Bloomberg-style analytics platform for global air cargo.
AeroIndex
- Tracks cargo aircraft movements worldwide in real time
- Aggregates flows by trade lane and economic region
- Computes rolling monthly averages to establish historical baselines
- Highlights deviations and trend shifts that may signal macro or geopolitical change
- Surfaces relevant political and economic news alongside the data for context
How we built it
We used a Python Flask backend and a plain HTML/CSS/JS frontend. We used rest APIs to build the proof of concept. We used SQLite to store information about flights such as the departing and landing airport. This was used in our stats endpoint so the data did not have to be refetched each time.
Challenges we ran into
Many flight info APIs were behind paywalls, so we relied on historical data to get high-quality free data for the prototype. To overcome the challenge of displaying flights on a map, we created a WebGL mask over the map using ThreeJS.
Accomplishments that we’re proud of
- Successfully integrating and visualizing real-time global flight data
- Building rolling monthly averages that clearly show trade shifts
- Significantly reducing data lag to create a smooth, responsive experience
- Delivering a prototype that feels close to a real financial product
What we learned
- Air cargo data contains strong early signals about global economic activity
- Financial users prioritize clarity, speed, and signal over feature count
What’s next for AeroIndex
AeroIndex has clear paths to expansion, including:
- Predictive models for trade flow and macro indicators
- Airline route and capacity optimization insights
- Industry-specific tracking (e.g. semiconductors, pharmaceuticals)
- Payload and value estimation to enhance economic relevance
Long-term, AeroIndex can become a core alternative data platform for investors, traders, and logistics intelligence teams.
Built With
- adsexchange
- gemini-api
- google-maps
- html
- javascript
- python
- sqlite
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