Atlantic air traffic

Here's a artfully rendered video by air traffic control service NATS of air traffic over the North Atlantic:
North Atlantic Skies from NATS on Vimeo.

Best airports for disease

As this flu seasons carries on, which airports figure most prominently in spreading disease? MIT figured that out and visualized it:
 

Sandy flight delays map animation

Here's a great animation put together by my friend Wm over at Flightstats showing the progression of flight delays as hurricane Sandy and the Frankenstorm moved through the weekend.

Kringus reveals plans

This is farther in to the same "Kringus" story line form Scott Kurtz' outstanding Player vs. Player webcomic. This is where we finally find out what Kringus is up to.  If you think this is sinister, y'ain't seen nuthin' yet.  Later Kringus story arcs go way into the deep end. 

But even as fun as the Kringus stories can be, my favorite Christmas map-related comic is this one:
http://blueskygis.blogspot.com/2009/12/i-love-christmas.html

Travel with Indiana Jones

One of the more memorable, I daresay iconic, map animations in cinematic history involves the travel/map sequences from the Indiana Jones franchise.  Here's an image from one of those sequences from the first movie "Raiders of the Lost Ark" where somebody has pointed out an error in the background map: The area labelled "Thailand" was actually called "Siam" during the timeframe in which the movie was supposed to be taking place.

This came from an internet item from Moviefone.com entitled The 15 Worst Movie Mistakes in History.  Frankly the items listed in the piece don't strike me as all that bad.  They're kinda nit-picky, mostly continuity errors and extras/props being visible where they shouldn't be.  I'll grant in this age of CGI many of those mistakes should have been eliminated, but none were glaringly obvious and/or damaging to the plotlines.  And certainly none comes anywhere close to rising to the level of "Worst movie mistakes in history".  The black hole that constitutes the plot(s) of any/all of the Transformers movies, that might be a "Worst movie mistake".  The second and third Matrix movies squandering such a perfect first in the series, or Lucas' pillaging of the original Star Wars trilogy (and just don't even speak the name of the Star Wars Holiday Special), or the completely ridiculous notion of an invasion of the U.S. that is the premise for Red Dawn (not to mention that the movie is a favorite at terrorist training camps and among those who kidnap child soldiers), any of those could qualify as a "Worst Movie Mistake in History", not some simple editing oversights.  

But let's not stop there.  While I wasn't able to find a clip of the actual map-background travel scenes from any Indiana Jones films, I was able to find a tribute video of sorts made by one Jason Byfield who wanted to make a map animation in the style of the Indiana Jones map travel sequence:

Traveling Indiana Jones Style from Jason Byfield on Vimeo.

Of course what I actually need is the map room scene from "Raiders..." That'd be perfect for the blog, no?

Sacramento Terminal

This is from the Sacramento California airport. I'm confident that if I ever found myself in this airport terminal I would definitely miss my flight.

Atlas-in-law

Last week we did the Roman version of this same gag.  Here Graham Chaffer does it combined with the "spouses arguing about directions" gag. It's still also an "Atlas" gag, but it's not as much of a "scale" gag.

Boeing, Boeing, ...

This is a print ad from 1959 for Boeing. The large caption is "Fast friend of over three-quarters of a million passengers." Remember when that might have seemed like a big number? Given the number of flights daily around the world (80k - 90k) and Boeing's massive presence in the airliner industry, there could easily be 3/4 million passengers on Boeing planes in the sky at any given time. But I'll bet none of them are on 707s

The rest of the copy reads:
One flight aboard the Boing 707, and you know why this xxxx jetxxxx is the most popular airliner in aviation history. xxxx [can't make out very much of this] xxxx More than three-quarters of a million passengers have already enjoyed this tranquil, but exhilerating, new way to travel. Make your next trip by Boeing 707!

TWA

How many of you can remember TWA? Sure, it was less than 9 years ago that TWA disappeared, but that seems like a long time ago for some reason. TWA was a mainstay in the airline industry for decades, even becoming one of the first all-jet fleets. TWA was acquired by American Airlines in 2001, but it was in its death throes before 9/11.

But this pre-jetliner-era 1951 ad shows TWA on the ascent, as it was becoming an American icon.

Of course today the flight map shown in this ad seems ridiculously anemic compared to the massive daddy-long-legs-type hub-and-spokes systems even the smaller modern carriers can sport. But whatcha gonna do. In the '50's, this was impressive.

This is another classic print ad from AdClassix.