Google Earth Flight Path Animations II
Continuing the idea of time animated flight paths in Google Earth, this KML file includes 300+ non-stop international routes from the four busiest international airports in the USA: New York Kennedy, Chicago O’Hare, Miami International and Los Angeles (LAX).
I’ve put together a video which shows the individual animations for each hub, then all combined.
Download the file here:
Flight Route Animations (440kB)
I’ve made a few subtle KML ’style’ changes from the Chicago version - thinner lines, different colours etc - but it’s pretty much the same thing multiplied by 6.
Routes are based on the destinations listed under individual airports in Wikipedia. Flight times are indicative not accurate. The KML is compiled by a script I’ve created to generate trajectories along ‘great circles’.
Anyone else think there’s a resemblance between this and the computer simulated nuclear war in the movie ‘WarGames‘ ? 
Related posts:
- Animated Flight Paths in Google Earth
- Flight Maps
- … and San Francisco
- Flight Route Maps for Australia and New Zealand
- UK and Ireland Flight Maps
Great work James! Your skills at creating effective animations using KML just keep getting better!
James,
This one is especially amazing (I’m abusing superlatives here). Is there any chance you could add San Francisco’s flights?
Indeed Frank
Congratulations (again) James, another great one
Thanks Folks
I’ll bump SFO up to the top of the to-do list.
James,
This is fantastic!!! Such a different and powerful visualization - congrats!
Please submit this to http://earth.google.com/gallerysubmit/ - This “unusual” use will be great to show.
Keep up the cool stuff!!!
This is an amazing piece of work. I would like to do something similar but have no idea where to start. It would only involve about 30-40 flights originating from Perth Australia and returning.
Can you please give me any help? Thanks
I thought of the scene from Wargames the minute your animation started! (I always loved the names of the WOPPR war game scenarios: “Albanian Decoy,” “Portugal Revolution,” “Chad Alert.” Someone thought up a lot of background material that got only microseconds of screen time.
Great work. We live in a Golden Age.
Really impressive stuff James. Congratulations on one of the best flight route animations I’ve seen. Look forward to more great stuff from you.
PS - Wargames it is!
Hi,
This is interesting….If I want to draw a path between two points, how can I make it curved? I need your help please.
Thanks,
Ibrahim
tremendus,fantestic visualization, and now i am intrested how you done this.and congratulation for this animation.
What you have is great, but You probably would want to include more USA airports as ATL International (Atlanta, GA) STL (Saint Louis-Lambert International (Saint Louis, MO), Logan (Boston MA) Laguadia (NY), and Dulles (Washington DC)
Well done for showing the USA, but what about flights from other places around the globe?
Tried Flights animation, but I get an error when I click on “play”:
“There are no selected placemarks for the animation”
I’ve tried to select some of the cities but nothing seems to work.
Barry,
To run this, you need to use the time control at the top of the Google Earth screen, not the play button in the left side-panel.
If you can’t see it, you might need to download a more recent version of Google Earth.
The video looks great, but where did you get the data for this? I am trying to do something similar, but for all european airports. Would you know where I could get the data? Without paying too much for it?
Great job!
Of course, it makes sense for you to simply follow the heaviest traffic volume, but if you are looking for input to help you prioritize future additions I’d love to see London and Stockholm added.
I can’t make it work … I get the message,
“There are currently no Placemarks selected for the tour. Please activate the checkbox for those Placemarks you wish to visit and restart the tour. You can also select a folder and play a tour of all its items whether or not they are checked.”
Huh?
So, in plain English, what do I do?
Nigel - when you open the file there should time controller at the top of the screen:
Click the play button on that.
If it’s not there you need to either switch it on - ‘Show time’, in the ‘view’ menu, or more likely upgrade to the latest version of Google Earth.
I’d like to see what international airline routes pass over my community on google earth. That would be really interesting to know.
unless i am not viewing this properly, it seems that the
aircraft reach altitiudes of 100’s of miles above the earth -
– not very accurate - why ?
The video looks great, but where did you get the data for this? I am trying to do something similar, but for all european airports. Would you know where I could get the data? Without paying too much for it?
Please help me out!
why the time zone doesnt work? I have got 1 Jan 2007 to 2 Jan 2007…why we can’t change to today?
A dramatic graphical depiction of flights above US was created by Aaron Koblin:
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap080429.html
cu,
g
This is a wonderful feature– I hope you’ll consider updating it though. There are many new routes from New York’s JFK airport now that are not represented in the animation, such Kiev, Accra, Cape Town, etc.
I am sure this is true for other airports as well, I just happen to be most familiar with that one.
This is terrific — Emirates will be operating LAX-DXB in October — would love to see that flight path as i’m flying it in Dec. Is there any way i could add Dubai to the tool in the interim?
Cheers
Hello there, I’m literally dying to know what airlines fly over the Shetland Islands… I’ve just seen 3 fly over my home in a succession of 5 minutes, all heading north !! Is there any way you can find out?
How do you get a LineString in kml to draw out over time instead of all at once? I can’t find it in Google’s kml reference or anywhere else, for that matter.
My guess is that you would use a TimeSpan kml section. I tried that, but the entire line segment would show up at the begin time, then disappear at the end time. I would like my LineString to behave like your flight path simulation–draw out up to a specified time and then stay there. But how?
Any chance you can add MSP? Minneapolis is a busy hub for Northwest and KLM, and soon to be Delta.
Hi,
really great animation. Can you answer me a question please?
I would like to have such cool Great Circle (without animation), because i would like to set up a path for all my destinations i have visited!
Or maybe there is someone else who could give me a hint to achieve this!
Wishes
Martin
any chance u can do heathrow and other airports worldwide
Hi James
It’s a great and probably long time job.
How did you implement all the coordinates ? By hand ?
How did you write the Placemarks ? All by hand ?
Do you maybe know some tools and automatism to find the coordinates along a path in GE and write them into the Placemarks ?
Many thanks for your tips.
Best regards
Poldi
Cool how can i get this on my website?????
@Poldi - Yes and no. Gathering the timetable data takes a long time, but the KML itself I put together automatically with my own command line Perl script. I’ll see if I can extract the line splitting part to make it available online sometime.
movable-type.co.uk have some online tools for finding coordinates from bearings and distances, but the site seems to be down at the moment