[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)