World Airports Voronoi (2014) • Hacker News Board

Re: World Airports Voronoi (2014)

#71

Post by lisper » Mon, Jun 18, 2018, 4:28 PM UTC

rando444 wrote: post #69

lisper wrote: post #64

This diagram is oddly selective about which airports it includes. It has some class D airports (Modesto, Santa Maria) but not others (Palo Alto, El Monte, Fullerton). There is no pattern that I can discern other than eliminating airports that are too close to each other, which kind of defeats the purpose of this exercise.

I noticed they included most all the tiny regional airports in Iceland, but left out ones like Kulusuk in Greenland, which receives international air traffic.

Receiving international traffic is actually not a good measure of an airport's significance. Grand View International (WN23), for example, receives international traffic (from Canada), but has only a single 1700-foot grass runway. (It's also private.)

Re: World Airports Voronoi (2014)

#72

Post by madeofpalk » Mon, Jun 18, 2018, 4:31 PM UTC

JoeMalt wrote: post #43

glup wrote: post #31

Interesting to compare with ETOPS (good maps: gc.kls2.com) which governs how far away from acceptable alternate airports a commercial plane can be. It corresponds to safe flying time with a single functional engine. So a lot of the area in some of the larger Voronoi regions, especially in the Southern Hemisphere, is actually unreachable by any commercial flight from the closest airport.

It's worth noting that ETOPS only applies to 2-engine aircraft; a 4-engine aircraft can travel outside the ETOPS-permitted areas as long as it has enough fuel.

When people say "ETPOS" these days, it's understood that they're talking about the maximum distance an aircraft of any size can fly from an airport - various regulators still apply such restrictions on aircraft with more than two aircrafts.

Re: World Airports Voronoi (2014)

#73

Post by cardiffspaceman » Mon, Jun 18, 2018, 4:38 PM UTC

I've been grinding on an observation about the distribution of people on Earth. It can be reduced to the observation that the city of Ushuaia, AR at 55 degrees south is the most southerly city (FWIW the other two contenders for that title are near Ushuaia), while the city of Copenhagen, DK at 55 degrees north is definitely not the most northerly city. Although there is a great deal of land below the Antarctic Circle, there are only research stations there. There isn't as much land above the Arctic Circle, but civilians live above it.

Re: World Airports Voronoi (2014)

#74

Post by zeristor » Mon, Jun 18, 2018, 4:40 PM UTC

Am I missing something, there are a number of airports in Antartica, I assume that none of these are commercial though:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airports_in_Antarctica

Re: World Airports Voronoi (2014)

#75

Post by jasondavies » Mon, Jun 18, 2018, 4:50 PM UTC

lisper wrote: post #64

This diagram is oddly selective about which airports it includes. It has some class D airports (Modesto, Santa Maria) but not others (Palo Alto, El Monte, Fullerton). There is no pattern that I can discern other than eliminating airports that are too close to each other, which kind of defeats the purpose of this exercise.

This is probably the most frequently asked question! The data is from here: http://ourairports.com/data/

I had to limit the number of airports displayed for performance reasons. I filtered the airport data so that only those airports with scheduled services and which are denoted "large" or "medium" are included (according to OurAirports), bringing the number down to 2,980.

Re: World Airports Voronoi (2014)

#76

Post by glup » Mon, Jun 18, 2018, 4:53 PM UTC

detaro wrote: post #50

JoeMalt wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's worth noting that ETOPS only applies to 2-engine aircraft; a 4-engine aircraft can travel outside the ETOPS-permitted areas as long as it has enough fuel.

Depends on the jurisdiction, the FAA applies the same rules to 4-engine aircraft that are carrying passengers now.

e.g. http://boeing.mediaroom.com/2015-03-18-Boeing-747-8-Intercon...

Re: World Airports Voronoi (2014)

#77

Post by JdeBP » Mon, Jun 18, 2018, 4:53 PM UTC

lisper wrote: post #64

This diagram is oddly selective about which airports it includes. It has some class D airports (Modesto, Santa Maria) but not others (Palo Alto, El Monte, Fullerton). There is no pattern that I can discern other than eliminating airports that are too close to each other, which kind of defeats the purpose of this exercise.

You will find the pattern, such as it is, explained at http://ourairports.com/about.html#credits .

Re: World Airports Voronoi (2014)

#78

Post by Marazan » Mon, Jun 18, 2018, 4:55 PM UTC

amelius wrote: post #14

emblaegh wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Voronoi diagrams work for any definition of `distance` that may suit your needs. So weighting by airport size and/or sea distance is pretty trivial.

I don't think it's that simple if the definition of distance is a function of position.

Yeah I'm pretty sure that whilst the 'mid' points on Delauny triangulation would be correctly scalped the edges of the Voronoi diagram would be wrong?

Re: World Airports Voronoi (2014)

#79

Post by alexbeloi » Mon, Jun 18, 2018, 4:59 PM UTC

cardiffspaceman wrote: post #73

I've been grinding on an observation about the distribution of people on Earth. It can be reduced to the observation that the city of Ushuaia, AR at 55 degrees south is the most southerly city (FWIW the other two contenders for that title are near Ushuaia), while the city of Copenhagen, DK at 55 degrees north is definitely not the most northerly city. Although there is a great deal of land below the Antarctic Circle,…

That's really interesting. Do you think it could be related to the effect of map projection biases? Is that a thing dates far enough back to affect settlement decisions?

Re: World Airports Voronoi (2014)

#80

Post by chx » Mon, Jun 18, 2018, 5:05 PM UTC

rando444 wrote: post #69

lisper wrote: post #64

This diagram is oddly selective about which airports it includes. It has some class D airports (Modesto, Santa Maria) but not others (Palo Alto, El Monte, Fullerton). There is no pattern that I can discern other than eliminating airports that are too close to each other, which kind of defeats the purpose of this exercise.

I noticed they included most all the tiny regional airports in Iceland, but left out ones like Kulusuk in Greenland, which receives international air traffic.

LHPR does a lot of business for Audi, 33 000 passengers a year between the Hungarian factory and the Ingolstadt parent plant in Germany and also some cargo as well. There are charters as well. So it receives international air traffic, alright but there are no scheduled flights simply because the area airports have no capacity problems. With three capitals -- Vienna, Budapest and Bratislava -- all within an hours drive in an imaginary scenario where those would be congested it would be booming but this is not London.