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Open Airport Map

openairportmap.org

21–30 of 113 posts

Re: Open Airport Map

#21
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

Same. Fun sight, but pretty annoying on FF.

Re: Open Airport Map

#23
post #8

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.

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).

> 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.

Re: Open Airport Map

#24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 sho…

https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/82162575#map=15/-8.7460/11...

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=Aéroport International Ngurah Rai
    name:ko=응우라라이공항
    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: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Names#Local_names_(loc_n... (I'm assuming the search is sourcing data from OSM).

Re: Open Airport Map

#25
post #8

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.

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).

"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

Re: Open Airport Map

#26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

> 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.

Yeah, fair enough, but it clearly prioritizes airport codes.

Re: Open Airport Map

#27
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.

Re: Open Airport Map

#28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

"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 loca…

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.

Re: Open Airport Map

#29

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…

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.

Re: Open Airport Map

#30
post #2

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?

Hmm, not here: clicked it away once and it never appeared again (110;0 on Win10 btw)
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