Paper maps have been replaced by their digital equivalents in many fields, but the idea that paper aviation charts could be replaced by an app running on an iPad is something new. Wired: “The Federal Aviation Administration is allowing charter…
This video is a visualization of the resumption of flights over European airspace after everything got shut down due to volcanic ash. ITO World combined flight data from flightradar24.com with OpenStreetMap map data; there are some gaps in coverage…
The Norwegian Meteorological Office has put together a time-lapse animation showing the spread of the ash cloud emitted by the Eyjafjallajökull volcano. I’ve converted it from the original animated GIF, which is nearly 14 MB, and uploaded it here….
Matt Fox has put together a Google Earth layer of IFR Enroute Low Altitude Charts, which are used for airplane navigation under instrument flight rules at altitudes below 18,000 feet (5,500 metres); note that the charts are not current and…
Both the first- and second-prize winners of this year’s National Geographic Award in Mapping are graduate students from the University of Wisconsin, Madison — a fact that the university’s geography department trumpets. Rising Skyline: The Tallest Buildings in Europe,…
Mario Freese writes to pimp his Air Lines art project. “Every single scheduled flight on any given day is represented by a fine line from its point of origin to it’s port of destination, thereby forming a net of…
Never having flown them, I was not aware that Southwest Airlines printed their route map on the cocktail napkins they hand out to passengers during the flight. That’s kind of neat. Via Cartophilia….
Flightmapping.com’s interactive maps show airline routes between airports in the UK and Ireland and, well, everywhere else in the world — which reflects the site’s overall focus, viz., providing flight information to and from the British Isles. Of limited…
Wired: “Two million flights pass through New York’s airspace each year. Artist Aaron Koblin used images from his piece, Flight Patterns, to create a Google map representing air traffic across the United States over a 24-hour period. The map…
About.com’s Amanda Briney has a primer on great circles. A great circle is the shortest distance between two points on a sphere; sailors and aviators use great circles to get the fastest and most efficient route from point A to…
A new book from the University of Chicago Press looks interesting: Cartographies of Travel and Navigation, edited by James R. Akerman, a collection of essays about the history of all kinds of transportation-related maps — railroads, roads, nautical and…
Edward Tufte has been asked “to take a look at airport runway maps and how runway incursions might be reduced by better maps”; the discussion on his bulletin board makes for interesting reading, particularly in light of the recent…
I love looking at aeronautical charts even if I have no idea what to do with them; I just think all the detail is neat. So it’s no surprise that I’ve been enjoying playing with the aeronautical charts collected…
Cartography has a great post about online collections of airline route maps, at the eponymous Airline Route Maps and elsewhere. See previous entry: Old Airline Route Maps….
Readers have written in asking about wall-sized maps before, but Joe Thompson is looking for something a lot more specific. Actually, in his case, the charts he wants are too big; he’s looking for a way to make them smaller:…
Huw — probably my best link submitter — writes in with another one: a series of maps on UAV safety. That’s unmanned aerial vehicles: think Predator drones. Unmanned aircraft are apparently 100 times less reliable than manned aircraft; the maps…
