Google Earth - Complete US Air Routes
A couple of weeks ago I put together a small collection of Google Earth airline route maps for various countries. These work interactively, using mouse hovers over airport Icons to activate and reveal destinations.
The previous files each had fewer than a thousand routes, and were fairly limited in scope. So, I was wondering, how effectively do these scale up ? As it turns out, surprisingly well.
The following Google Earth networklink opens a file including 13287 scheduled routes within the USA, between 714 airports.
Flight Maps (USA) (2 MB)
Data is from the US Bureau of Transportation’s most recent monthly flight stats: October 2007. Strictly speaking it’s not really a route map in the same way as my other files - rather, it’s a map showing where scheduled airlines flew that particular month.
Viewing Suggestions:
- Because of the high number of placemarks and long distances involved, this all looks much better full screen [F11].
- To permanently lock on a set of lines:
- Right click on the entire file, a folder or airport,
- Go to Properties,
- Select the Style, Color tab,
- Then increase the line opacity.
- Hit OK.
- The only way to fully reverse this, and get the mouse over effect back, is to re-download or re-open the file. To do this within GE: right-click on the root folder: US Flight Maps, and select refresh.
- Don’t forget you can hold down the middle mouse button and swing the view around while keeping the flightpaths displayed.
Related posts:
- Flight Route Maps for Australia and New Zealand
- UK and Ireland Flight Maps
- 2200 Biggest Airports in the USA
- Flight Maps
- Google Earth Flight Path Animations II
James, I found if you mouse over an airport’s placemark and then click and hold the middle button on the placemark, you can rotate and tilt while viewing the routes. But, using the SpaceNavigator is even better. Once you mouse over you can then use the SN to move your view all over the place while still seeing the flight lines. I’m going to do a video showing this.
You can also copy an airport node and paste it external to KML, allowing customization without messing up the original
Pete - Good point. Helps save my bandwidth too.
Hi James,
I just noticed that total pax data you provide via FAA is only for arrivals. Another link you could use is
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World’s_busiest_airports_by_traffic_movements
Krgds
Jan
I installed the flight program but cannot get it to animate.I’m new at this so i need some real help.There is a guage at the top of the screen going back and forth with the same date ,over and over.All I get is a plane flashing in and out in the same spot.Help….please…
Nick
Hi James, Great work.
I have been playing around with this, trying to learn and recreate it. I can do most of it apart from working out how you create the actual flight path ie start and end ok, allititude of the points between the start and end ok, how to break the flight path into equal parts(and keeping it straight) not ok. Do you input this info manually or do you have a short cut?? Thanks for your time, Robin
Robin,
No easy answer I’m afraid. There isn’t anything ready built into GE or KML. I wrote my own specifically tailored script to generate the KML which breaks the lines into segments, and calculates the exact lat,lon and alt each step of the way.
If it’s something you want to attempt, I recommend taking a look at the stuff on this page:
http://www.movable-type.co.uk/scripts/latlong.html
Hi James,
Just got back into this. Thanks for the reply. Will have a look at the link and see how I go.
Cheers