[HN Gopher] Open Airport Map
___________________________________________________________________
Open Airport Map
Author : chippy
Score : 281 points
Date : 2023-02-25 11:12 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (openairportmap.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (openairportmap.org)
| ecommerceguy wrote:
| Looks more like a cad drawing than a map. I'm sorry but as a
| rather prolific former cartographer (I've made thousands of maps
| for hundreds of clients) what is the goal of this map? Showing
| terminal locations? Where to park? Size relative to surroundings?
| Location of manholes? Noise compatibility?
| ericpauley wrote:
| I'm sorry but as a pilot who routinely uses airport diagrams
| what specific weakness are you seeing? As you are probably
| aware, not all maps are intended to have some beautiful
| aesthetic. This map is quite akin in style to the layout of
| airport maps (diagrams) published for actual pilot use.
| dtgriscom wrote:
| You derided the question, but then answered it: this is for
| pilot use.
| ericpauley wrote:
| I wouldn't necessarily say it is. It's an automated
| visualization of machine-readable data on airports. If you
| were processing this data, you'd want a visualization like
| this.
| billfor wrote:
| Well for one thing the taxiway letters and runway markings
| are missing. If it's a "map" I would expect to use it for
| directions.
| jjwiseman wrote:
| Zoom in a little to see taxiway names.
| ericpauley wrote:
| It is a visualization of community-sourced (OpenStreetMap)
| data on airports. This data is clearly supported as
| Frankfurt does have many surfaces labeled. Working towards
| making this data available is useful even if every single
| item isn't there.
| cmurf wrote:
| I'm confused why it shows detail like holding position
| markings, but not taxiways or hot spots. And it conflates
| locations using different hold short markings (ILS and
| runway).
| ericpauley wrote:
| In Frankfurt at least I see the ILS critical areas tagged
| with "holding_position:type: ILS". For instance south of
| arrival end 25C. Looking at aerial imagery these do
| correctly align with the ILS and hold-short markings.
|
| Edit: it does appear that hold lines are mis-tagged in some
| spots, e.g. north of arrival end 25C.
| jjwiseman wrote:
| It's just showing OpenStreetMap data. Anyone can edit and
| add data. The data that's in there is just what enthusiasts
| have added in the past 20 years. If no one added it, it's
| not there. You can add data if you like.
| ecommerceguy wrote:
| As a frequent flyer on small aircraft (nearly all of one side
| of my family has worked in aviation: cessna, boeing, piper,
| beech, embraer) - this looks nothing like the charts I'm used
| to viewing.
| the_mitsuhiko wrote:
| That doesn't answer the question: what is wrong with the
| map? As a non pilot I can't say that I find an airport
| diagram from the FAA more insightful:
| https://aeronav.faa.gov/d-tpp/2302/00375AD.PDF
| repiret wrote:
| I am a pilot, and I compared the FAA diagram of SFO that
| you pointed out with the openairportmap.org one. Looking
| at the map itself:
|
| * Taxiway labels aren't very readable, and I need to zoom
| in quite a bit for them to even be consistently
| displayed.
|
| * For that matter, the yellow lines seem to cover a lot
| of things that aren't taxiways, and seem to extend into
| non-movement areas (areas outside the purview of ground
| control/tower), and for that reason, they make the actual
| taxyways harder to see.
|
| * The runways are labled in a way that requires
| consulting the compass rose to interpret - "10L/28R".
| "10L/28R" is the name for that strip of tarmac, but when
| you're landing with a heading of 284o, it's called "28R"
| and when you're landing the other way, it's called "10L".
| Compare that with the FAA diagram, which labels them
| clearly at the landing side of the runway, the same way
| the numbers are painted on the ground.
|
| * The openairportmap diagram lacks runway length and
| width.
|
| * OpenAirportMap lacks the location of the displaced
| thresholds on the 28 and 1 runways.
|
| * OpenAirportMap lacks the location of the runaway
| airplane catchers (EMAS) at the ends of the 1/19 runways.
|
| * OpenAirportMap lacks any field elevation information
|
| * OpenAirportMap doesn't have an indication of north, or
| of the magnetic variance.
|
| * SFO doesn't have a VOR on-field, but if it did, it's
| location would be printed on FAA map, but not openairport
|
| * The FAA map has the ATIS (weather), Tower, Ground
| Control, and Approach Control frequencies listed on it.
|
| Overall, I would say the openairport map is not useful to
| a pilot. Which I think goes to the GP's point: "what is
| the goal of this map?" It's not to help a pilot.
| ericpauley wrote:
| Clearly nobody is going to cancel their Foreflight
| subscription for this. But the point is that the map is
| short on aesthetic details because its goal is to allow
| visualization of a complex dataset, namely airport
| surface features.
| pastage wrote:
| Your objections can be split in three parts.
|
| First, "this is not for pilots", it probably can be.
|
| Second, the layout/design is not helpful, seems to be
| mostly nit picking (which is good).
|
| Third, the data is wrong.
|
| The data can be corrected on http://osm.org by anyone, so
| that means your first objection is true. The design and
| layout can of course be corrected over time, depending on
| how many people care about mapping/visualizing them. The
| question is can you land an airplane with this map, this
| will be tested in flight sims that will use the same
| data.
|
| So I do not know the goal of this map, but I have entered
| data about airports in to Openstreetmap and I most
| certainly did not do it for pilots. This was ten years
| ago I see that the amount of data has grown incredibly,
| So there must be people that care about it. That makes me
| believe that all your objections will be solved. Except
| the first one I listed since we can't have an fully
| loaded passenger plane land based upon my data.
| jjwiseman wrote:
| This obviously isn't for pilots (as a pilot you don't
| want to use information that anyone can edit at anytime).
| It's just a different way of highlighting lots of
| airport-related information that is available in
| OpenStreetMap, which is a cool thing to do.
| ericpauley wrote:
| I'm specifically referring to the lack of aesthetic
| details.
|
| For instance, IFR charts (https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/f
| light_info/aeronav/productc...) show just essential routing
| information.
|
| Here's an example taxi diagram: https://www.faa.gov/air_tra
| ffic/publications/atpubs/aip_html...
|
| Again the key point I'm highlighting is lack of extraneous
| aesthetic.
|
| The view is even _more_ similar to that used by ATC:
| https://atctower.com/what-the-atc-controller-sees-tech-in-
| th...
|
| If you've ridden a lot in planes, you may be used to
| looking at VFR sectionals (https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/
| flight_info/aeronav/productc...). These have more aesthetic
| detail precisely because they're intended for visual
| navigation.
| bhargav wrote:
| If you're a Cartographer and have made thousands of maps
| surely you know that some maps are for different audiences
| and use cases. This might just seem odd to you because you
| haven't used this information in a manner laid out here,
| but trust me that it's valuable!
| ecommerceguy wrote:
| This is exactly my point - however there is nothing clear
| about the intended use of this map.
|
| Former Cartographer - deriding my paying attention you
| abandon yours.
| ericpauley wrote:
| It shows airport data from OpenStreetMap. It's posted on
| a site targeted at software developers. Is it that much
| of a stretch to conclude it's for use by people
| interested in machine-readable data on airports?
| bhargav wrote:
| This has all the information a pilot would need to take off and
| land from an airport. Airport maps are usually available for
| free in US but at least I have yet to find some for some
| Canadian airports. The Canadian organizations sell those. There
| are paid apps you can get. This looks like a good free
| alternative.
|
| Addendum: someone mentioned Airnav. Just to see the lack of
| open and up to date data available freely, look at SFO [1] and
| look at YYZ [2]. SFO has an airport diagram showing taxy ways
| and runways and some other meta information. nothing for YYZ.
|
| 1: https://www.airnav.com/airport/SFO
|
| 2: https://www.airnav.com/airport/CYYZ
| Svip wrote:
| A bit disappointing that one has to search for an airport to have
| it displayed. One of my favourite parts of OpenRailwayMap is to
| explore tracks I'm unfamiliar with (particularly abandoned
| tracks), but this map seems to require one to know where one is
| going, rather than exploring.
| remram wrote:
| That is true, zooming in on an airport won't let you see its
| features, you'll have to read its name and put it on the
| searchbox for that part of the map to be displayed. You'd
| expect that zooming in on an airport would allow you to see it,
| or at the minimum to be able to click on an airport to load it
| up.
| robwert wrote:
| I like to use airnav https://www.airnav.com/airport/
| deutschepost wrote:
| Looks very nice. But I was a bit confused by the UX. If you close
| your current airport it is still selected. I think it would be
| nicer if you could select an Airport with the map afer closing,
| rather than only using the searchbar.
| notahacker wrote:
| I'd be interested in knowing where they sourced their passenger
| traffic figures from.
| mormegil wrote:
| Probably Wikidata, see e.g.
| https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q46033#P3872
| lisper wrote:
| Very nice! But when I try to look at LAX it says: Couldn't find
| airport with ICAO code "KLAX". All other airports seem to work
| though, so this is a strange bug.
| mdaniel wrote:
| It's due to what appears to be a bogus error message in the
| response to <https://openairportmap.org/api/airport/KLAX>:
| "remark": "runtime error: Query timed out in \"query\" at line
| 6 after 29 seconds."
|
| I say bogus error message because for sure that URL did not
| take 29 seconds to return (221ms according to Firefox). I'd
| guess the query is malformed and their api interprets the error
| as a "timeout" instead of "error"
| ericpauley wrote:
| The amount of hate this project is getting in the comments is
| just incredible...
|
| Very little airport surface data is made available in an open and
| machine-readable format (aerial navigation data is available
| openly in the US at least). Because of this only the big players
| (e.g., Boeing) have this data. OpenStreetMap users who contribute
| this data are democratizing access for anyone who wants to work
| with airport data in the same way global map data is
| democratized.
|
| At the same time, data is only useful if you can make sense of
| it, and the first task towards being able to work with this data
| is visualizing it. A specialized mapping tool helps a lot here.
| Props to the author for making it!
|
| One example use case: citizen scientists could develop and test
| new planning algorithms for airplane taxiing that are resistant
| to blockages and availability problems. This is science _you_
| could do _right now_ only because data like this is available.
| jossclimb wrote:
| Is this more for planespotters? I had been thinking for a while,
| I would love a source to find shops / cafes etc in an airport.
| globular-toast wrote:
| The data is from OpenStreetMap. That has a ton of data inside
| airports that we frequently make use of, including things like
| water fountains and toilets. One thing that is a bit difficult
| is determining whether something is before or after security,
| though. Depends on the airport and how well you know it.
|
| You can use an app like Organic Maps (formerly Maps.me) or
| Osmand to access it.
| SergeAx wrote:
| I actually expected to see a map of insides of the airport:
| check-in stalls, security control, lounges and shops. Some places
| even had those, but it is painted over with an orange "this is an
| airport building" matte plate.
| mshockwave wrote:
| For some reason it couldn't find LAX's full designation, KLAX.
| Also, just realized SNA, an tiny local airport, has a whopping
| 5000+ft runway, longer than some major ones like SFO or BOS.
| onionisafruit wrote:
| That's an exceptionally short runway. SFO and BOS certainly
| have longer runways than that.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| That's barely enough for the smaller 737 variants. SFO has
| runways more than twice as long.
| ben_w wrote:
| Neat, but with the usual USA-centricism: Despite the map starting
| at Frankfurt (the one in the west of Germany), and me being in
| Berlin (the one in the east of Germany) the first result for
| "Berlin" was the one in New Hampshire, USA.
| [deleted]
| cowsandmilk wrote:
| That isn't us centrism, it's just a search that hasn't been
| optimized in any way. Los Angeles gives a poor first result as
| well.
| niklasrde wrote:
| That could have sooo many reasons. "Berlin Municipal Airport"
| does come before "Flughafen Berlin Brandenburg" in the
| alphabet.
|
| But.. looking for "London", 2 of the first 3 airports are in
| North America and arguably a lot of people would not count any
| of the first 5 (Lydd, Oxford & Southend) as London. Heathrow
| doesn't show up at all without specifying further.
| notahacker wrote:
| There's a few other areas where the text is suspect, e.g the
| international airport for Bali, in Denpasar won't show up in
| searches for Bali (colloquial name of the airport) or
| Denpasar (city referenced by the IATA code) both of which
| work in regular flight search, but requires entering the
| airport codes or its formal name Ngurah Rai. Extra confusion
| as there _is_ a tiny airport called Bali Airport in Cameroon
| which shows up instead...
|
| In theory, they could build a system which returns relevant
| airports ranked by size in terms of latest/peak passenger
| traffic figures
| snthd wrote:
| https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/82162575#map=15/-8.7460/1
| 1...
|
| Tags: addr:city=Denpasar
| aeroway=aerodrome iata=DPS icao=WADD
| name=Bandar Udara Internasional Ngurah Rai
| name:de=Internationaler Flughafen Ngurah Rai
| name:en=Ngurah Rai International Airport
| name:fr=Aeroport International Ngurah Rai
| name:ko=eunguraraigonghang operator=PT. Angkasa
| Pura I short_name=Bandara Internasional Ngurah Rai
| type=civil wikidata=Q1061846
| wikipedia=id:Bandar Udara Internasional Ngurah Rai
|
| Colloquial names can be added with the various name tags: h
| ttps://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Names#Local_names_(loc_n
| ... (I'm assuming the search is sourcing data from OSM).
| throwaway049 wrote:
| How do these peripheral airports get to name themselves in
| such a misleading way? 'London Oxford airport' isn't even in
| Oxford; locals still call it Kidlington airport.
| 867-5309 wrote:
| Oxford is a commuter city for London - you can drive
| to/from the centre of each in around 90mins
|
| or London Heathrow to Oxford Airport in around 60mins
|
| that's no time at all compared to the driving distances
| between major US cities, which I'm guessing is what this is
| based on
| Zigurd wrote:
| You should see what they name towns in Maine. Not the Paris
| you expected.
| maxerickson wrote:
| It isn't being US centric, the search only supports airport
| codes.
|
| Looks like the site was setup by a german (or at least someone
| that lives in Germany and speaks german).
| capableweb wrote:
| > It isn't being US centric, the search only supports airport
| codes.
|
| It supports searching for other parts of the name (or closest
| (big-ish) city that airports tend to name themselves after).
|
| However, the search seems to not work with spaces, so can
| only search for one word in the name, it seems.
| maxerickson wrote:
| Yeah, fair enough, but it clearly prioritizes airport
| codes.
| FearNotDaniel wrote:
| "only" supports airport codes is definitely not true, though
| text search outside of airport codes, as others have noted,
| leads to some odd sort ordering.
|
| I don't think being built by a German speaker has anything to
| do with it. Typing "Vienna" (the English name for the city)
| returns the expected airport first, perhaps because the IATA
| code is VIE. Typing "Wien" (the actual name of the city in
| German, used by the locals) puts it further down the list
| among funny little airfields in other places.
|
| The UX lesson for us all: sorting of search results is
| _hard_. It helps to know who your users are, and what they
| are looking for. Fundamentally, my bigger question with this
| site - which looks awesome, and is fun to geek out over - is
| who is it _for_? Professional pilots obviously have their own
| resources already to tell them how to navigate around
| airports, where to park and where to taxi; the detailed
| information that would actually be useful for a first-time
| passenger at Frankfurt airport is completely lacking, eg. how
| long will it take me to transfer from an inbound London
| flight to my connection to a small town in Austria, how can I
| find shortcuts to shave a few minutes off that, will I have
| to go through extra security checks (the answer varies with
| the direction of travel and, apparently, the time of day), is
| it more convenient to stop off in the business lounge of the
| terminal where I arrive, before transferring, or the one that
| might be close to my departure gate, can I still enter
| Schengen through the electronic gates with a UK passport or
| must I join a long queue with the Americans and Japanese,
| where can I refill my water bottle and charge my phone for
| free, etc etc etc
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| It's using simple title search. The municipal berlin
| airport in the us name is shorter so it comes out on top.
| It has no notion of one Berlin being more important than
| another.
|
| The UX lesson here is that geocoding names to coordinates
| is hard. It's always a bit subjective. Another lesson is
| that search ranking is hard. Even though this is fine, it
| could be improved a little:
|
| - take into account distance
|
| - take into account size of the airport (number of
| graphical elements, runway, surface area, etc.)
|
| - take into account size of nearby cities (there is some
| open data for that)
|
| - support fuzzy search
|
| - etc.
| dtagames wrote:
| The official website shown for IAH is a limo company. Looks like
| not great web scraping. I also find this unattractive and not
| useful, and I love airports.
| mormegil wrote:
| Apparently, they use Wikidata, where this was listed as the
| official website. I fixed it on Wikidata and it appeared fixed
| on the website immediately as well, so they apparently fetch
| the data online, no prior download nor caching?
| ShakataGaNai wrote:
| What is the end goal of this project? Mapping runways and
| taxiways isn't ... useful? At least in the United States if it's
| a field big enough for a K-designation, then there is an Airport
| Diagram published by the FAA. And therefor public domain.
|
| Ex: https://aeronav.faa.gov/d-tpp/2302/00568ad.pdf
|
| Something like OpenStreetMap makes sense because there is no
| public domain published map of everything. I'm sure there is
| something obvious here I'm missing. Maybe it's just anything that
| isn't US might be the problem.
| rippercushions wrote:
| As far as I can tell this _is_ OpenStreetMap, but filtered to
| show just the airport data.
| tiffanyh wrote:
| There's even an official Jeppesen map for the north pole
|
| https://ww2.jeppesen.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/north-po...
| ShakataGaNai wrote:
| Oh my goodness, that is hilarious. Just 100% Easter eggs. I
| think my favorite is "If Dasher sick, reduce speed by 2
| reindeer"
| metacritic12 wrote:
| I personally would love a map telling me which parts of which
| airports are most connected airside, and average moving times
| between different regions of the airport.
| ShakataGaNai wrote:
| From a pedestrian perspective? Yea. I could totally see that
| being useful for a lot of large airports.
| ir77 wrote:
| Did that site just completely highjack my back button to the
| point that I had to kill the browser tab to get out of it?
| TillE wrote:
| Right click your back button and you can jump back to previous
| sites.
| sgtnoodle wrote:
| Yes, same thing happened to me.
| netsharc wrote:
| So many bad practices.. it changes the URL at every action to
| store your new coordinates/zoom levels, but adds to the browser
| history instead of replacing it.
|
| Also the whole asking for location unprompted, and not
| respecting a refusal... dumb.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Very nicely done and very responsive. The one thing I'd love to
| see added is information on which airlines use which gates. I
| know airlines often share gates, but even knowing which gates are
| most likely for a given airline would be useful. In Atlanta, I
| like being able to fly out of a T-Gate because it has its own
| security checkpoint that's typically, but not always, faster than
| the main security checkpoint. I think those gates are mostly used
| by American and United but would be nice to see it listed on each
| gate.
| callahad wrote:
| For what it's worth, all gates in Atlanta are connected
| airside, so you can use that checkpoint no matter which gate
| you're ultimately flying out of.
|
| If you haven't done so, it's actually quite nice to skip the
| Plane Train and walk between the concourses; there's a very
| cool collection of Zimbabwean sculpture down there between the
| T and A gates.
| dtgriscom wrote:
| If I have a longer layover in the Atlanta airport, my trick
| is to go all the way to the end of the line, to the
| international terminal. It's much quieter and less busy than
| the other terminals, and you can read/surf in peace.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| It's nice but not very responsive. We switched from leaflet
| (this seems to use that as well) to maplibre last year for this
| reason. Zooming and panning are a bit slowish.
| whoisstan wrote:
| For Fraport > document.querySelectorAll("path").length > 5000
|
| They might need combine/reduce the elements. Or use a canvas?
| niklasrde wrote:
| I just spent 20 minutes flying to various airports I've been to
| in person. Curious to see space/gate/terminal efficiency and
| closeness from one central point at eg DUS and FRA with the
| evolution that is LHR.
|
| LUX and LCY are also interesting: comparable max passenger
| numbers of 4M-5M, LUX has 2x> as many weekend slots as LCY,
| presumably similar clientel (though LUX does more hub flights I
| reckon), and very different space and layout constraints.
| benjojo12 wrote:
| LCY has a Saturday Noon to Sunday Noon curfew.
|
| It makes the life's of people like me who live near it much
| better! Even if it means that weekend flights from my nearest
| airport can be a pain
| cargolux wrote:
| LUX is a much bigger air cargo hub than a passenger airport;
| that's the difference. There hasn't been long-haul/wide-body
| passenger service there in many years, but that 4000m runway
| sees real use. Usually 50% more freight aircraft movements (and
| many multiples the mass) than passenger aircraft at LUX.
|
| LCY is a one-trick-pony: a private airport for European finance
| bros.
| ricardobeat wrote:
| Zooming in/out spams entries in your browser history. I haven't
| looked but guess it's a case of history.replace va history.push
| in js.
| c0nsumer wrote:
| This is a neat looking site, but for some reason on Firefox it
| prompts for location every few seconds. I allow it, but don't
| check the 'Remember this decision' box. It even is showing my
| current location and still popping up the box. This is the first
| time I've seen a site do this... Maybe it's turning on and off
| detailed location repeatedly?
| lostfocus wrote:
| That's a browser's default behaviour when the location is
| requested without user interaction. In this case they request
| the location immediately when opening the page, they're
| supposed to add a "Use my location" button and in that case the
| browser would remember the decision for the current session.
| c0nsumer wrote:
| It'd even keep happening if I click allow? (That's what I was
| doing, and it kept prompting over and over.)
|
| They do have a locate button, but even clicking that didn't
| change the behavior.
| lostfocus wrote:
| Yes. The restriction on the Location API are pretty strict.
| Wonnk13 wrote:
| Same. Fun sight, but pretty annoying on FF.
| thex10 wrote:
| Same on Safari when I change airports (and I have to decline
| every time).
| cbgonz wrote:
| Hmm, not here: clicked it away once and it never appeared again
| (110;0 on Win10 btw)
| adamm255 wrote:
| Currently sitting on a taxiway at Heathrow. Can confirm this is
| very accurate (at least for LHR!). Very nice!
| slater wrote:
| Now someone do this for grocery stores.
| gennarro wrote:
| Love open flight data! So much of it to go around, it's one of
| the few topics where there is practically too much free data to
| use. Reminds me of https://tsa.report and
| https://openflights.org/ etc
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-02-25 23:00 UTC)