Here is a sample of the airport access maps we intend to produce for the following UK regions:

• Birmingham & the Midlands [EMA, MAN and also to LTN, LHR, LGW & STN]
• London airports – direct connections
• Scottish Central Belt
• Manchester & Northern English airports
• Northern Ireland access to Belfast Airports

A sample map is below – this is for Birmingham and the Midlands.

[Full size 1000 x 1000 px]

As these maps are in the development and testing phase, we would welcome any feedback from users – are they useful, or do they just give you information you already know? Do they help make your journey simpler, or just add to the confusion?

Well, this one is doing the rounds, and I have to say it is a world class piece of complaint writing. Quite how this poor customer managed to end up with such a dog’s dinner of a dinner is beyond us, but I hope he at least gets a free upgrade on his next flight:

“Dear Mr Branson

REF: Mumbai to Heathrow 7th December 2008

I love the Virgin brand, I really do which is why I continue to use it despite a series of unfortunate incidents over the last few years. This latest incident takes the biscuit.

Ironically, by the end of the flight I would have gladly paid over a thousand rupees for a single biscuit following the culinary journey of hell I was subjected to at thehands of your corporation”.

 Continues…

• “The world’s best passenger complaint letter”

In addition to our new flight route maps, we are also producing a series of simple city maps. Rather than relying on highly complex street maps, or searches on Google maps / Earth which take you somewhere the other side of the planet, our maps will include the basic information visitors need, and no more.

For a taster, we’ve started with Cairo, which was at the centre of the original Chess Board Maps proposal. Searching Google maps for ‘Giza’ was certainly very confusing – and trying to scan around to see the Pyramids from a satellite image is also quite tricky, as they are so hazy at that height. A better idea might have been to search for ‘Pyramids’, rather than ‘Giza’, but there are numerous cases where searching for one person’s ‘obvious’ is totally different to the way a map might have been programmed.

Our Cairo map is on our Cairo flights page – we hope you can come back and tell us that these maps are useful, and that they enhance your travel research. Otherwise we can only expect users to come back to us saying “Just the basic facts, we can tell you why this hurts“. I hope we get it right!

A few notes about our Cairo map:

• From internal feedback, the Egyptian museum, citadel and bus station need to be added.
• Metro line 3 (green) is under construction, but we understand that some of this is already open – to be confirmed.
• We will add on popular train destinations outside Cairo ‘outside the box’ grid.

Here’s a sneak preview of Flightmapping.com’s new route map concept. We’re still several weeks away from launch, but I wanted to flesh out the basic idea for a few of our contacts to look at and give us feedback.

A few quick notes:

• We have experimented on different versions of this map with and without the route lines. At the moment, we all think these maps are better off without.
• To test interactivity, hover over a UK or Irish airport (origin) or over any airport in the Middle East (destination) – e.g. hover over LHR (Heathrow) or DXB (Dubai).
• This is not 100% accurate for either routes or city codes – I have just done this from my head.
• The next test version will be fully accurate, and I expect to put this up in a week or so.
• This has been done with airport codes. It would be easy to adapt to one big letter per city (eg L for London, D for Dubai). To have the full name, the dots would need to be pin-sized – we will put up a version with full names, but I don’t expect it to be the route we’ll take.
• Although we plan to show either 3 letter airport codes or 1 letter city abbreviations, we will include a static version of the map which does have the full names
• Users can always scan round to get the name of any cities they don’t know.
• Oh, and by the way, we’re still looking for answers to our “guess the city” picture – and no, it is NOT Brasilia!
• See also our simplified city maps, as we’ve put on our flights to Cairo page.

OK then, here goes: [1000x1000px half size] [2000x2000px full size]

 

 

Based on an original idea for “Chess Board World Maps” by & (C) James Avery 2008. Routes map (C) 2009 Flightmapping Ltd

Here is a classic image of somewhere which might well remind you of one capital, but is actually another capital, several thousand miles away.

Where is it?

Image taken from Wikipedia – I would give a credit, but that would enable a reverse look up!