FlightAware Map Design (2024)

O/T but flightaware leaked users data for years and tried to get away with not letting anyone know, use anything else. adsbexchange is better in every way

I had an opportunity to work with OSM data (nowhere close to something like FlightAware would need) at the beginning of the year and this comment put into words something I felt deeply at that time — "OSM is amazing, but as a global project with thousands of contributors, its data can be... quirky.". I have tons respect for this kind of stuff after working on that project and seeing the massive amount of time that gets invested to make things look correct for the use. It's the quintessential if nobody notices then you've done your job extremely well.

I flew United a few days ago and noticed the change in the flight map: you can now see individual aircraft moving about airports, which is awesome. What's less awesome is that the marker of the aircraft you're most interested in, namely the one you're sitting on, is not aligned with the map when in detailed view, and unlike the Flightaware app, you can't get info about other airplanes (operator, flight number, destination, etc) by tapping on them.

Even more annoyingly, during takeoff and landing, the flight map system intentionally disables any way to see your precise location, altitude, velocity and direction. The "cockpit view" pane that shows these when cruising becomes unavailable, and the airplane marker is also hidden beyond a certain zoom level. Presumably this is some kind of misguided security by obscurity measure to stop terrorists, who apparently aren't smart enough to carry mobile phones with GPS receivers.

It’s great to see Apache Baremaps being mentioned. It’s a great project and I saw its first iterations. Really amazing they have built a community around it.

Although my library in Apache Baremaps probably plays a minor role only (PgBulkInsert for Postgres COPY protocol), it’s great to see it chugging on all this data day by day.

A concern I have for modern day mapping systems is that digital maps, like Google Maps and OpenStreetMap (OSM), typically operate on the assumption of a static, rigid Earth. I don’t know much about it, but from what I understand, they use coordinate systems like WGS84, which are a snapshot in time. These would be great for local precision but less so for tectonic precision, due to tectonic plate activity (continental drift), post-glacial rebound (areas still rising after ice sheets melted), and sudden seismic events (earthquakes).

And then there’s GPS coordinate shift. From what I read, ITRF, ETRS89, and coordinates associated with epoch dates attempt to deal with this.

So, even though it may not matter as much for FlightAware maps, autonomous and GPS-based systems are a little worrying. Being overly dependent on them may have some be risk over time.

Where can I see a heatmap of how many flights went over in the last 24 hours?

(2024)