Airline Tracker Reviews

John Bevins Moisont, of French-Canadian descent, was born into a farming family in Illinois in 1868. In his 30s, he and his brothers bought a large plantation in El Salvador when in 1909, the president of Nicaragua sent him to France to learn about airplanes. Before too long, he was a daredevil barnstorming across the country and in August of 1910 crossed the English Channel with a mechanic Albert and his cat Madmoiselle Fifi. By the end of December of that year, he was in New Orleans racing against Packard Automobiles and preparing for competitions. On the last day of the year, he crash landed on his head in a cemetery when a gust of wind caught him as he attempted to land. From then on, the airport at that location has been signed MSY, Moisont Stock Yards in his honor and on September 16th, 2010 at 1:30 pm I will land at Louis Armstrong International Airport to begin my journey in New Orleans.



Between 2007 and 2008 or so, creating airline path visualizations was popular. In the vein of the famous 24 hours in the air video posted above and say, James of Barnabu.co.uk's KML add-ons, I'd like to recreate this for my trip.

Flight tracking services have been available online for a while and I remember vacantly watching the plane of love ones fly through the sky. Plotting altitude and coordinates in Google Earth and Google Maps is relatively easy, but where is this data to be found? Below is a review of commercial flight tracking websites.

First is FlyteComm Based in Mountain View California and run by a pair with a history in Retrix and Sabre Airline Solutions, this site powers the more gaudy HelloFlight.com. The site offers commercial flight tracking products for websites and situational awareness ideas for 911 responders. *yawn*

Another website featuring flight tracking is FlightArrivals.com. Based near me in Reston, VA, the website is a subsidiary of the vaguely-named Technology Integration Services. Since the company provides services such as 3d seatmaps, planes, terminal designs, etc, all are packed on their website. This leaves the site very plug-in heavy, busy and nominally useful. For instance, the website features a 3-d flyover Dulles Airport. While neat, Dulles is the only airport receiving this special treatment and it took a while to load.

Fltplan.com appears to be a much older website and a treasure trove of flying information but appears to be heavily rooted in the aviator world. The website even comes with a tutorial for its weather, fuel prices, navigation aid and historical flight directory and so on. While it has won a Pilot's Choice Award, the site, of mediocre design and functionality, appears to be for and by pilots and still left me without simple coordinate and altitude data I could use for visualizing.

This leaves Flightaware at the top of the heap. The company is based in Houston, TX with an office in New York City and is designed effectively as a front end for what appears to be a strong database. The ambitious website is also trying to leverage a community that submits airport gossip, photos and other very geeky things. The map interface appears to be proprietary, but pairs the expected flight route, actual flight route, time left and even fare price data in a simple to use format.

Most powerful are the coordinate and altitude logs I've been looking for to complete my project. Free logs are provided for the same flight in the last month and even speed and altitude graphs only 5-6 minutes delayed from flights in the air. Apart from my project, why is this information valuable? Artists like myself can take this data and create massive works that can help tell stories. It is through these stories we can identify bottlenecks and ask and answer questions people might not see in their day to day lives. Allowing such information to be widely available can help us design a better way to move people around in the long term. In the short term, however, a well trained eye can turn this information into art that helps people analyze the world in the sky and to look upon it with the same wonder that pilots and birds do. This is especially necessary as Airlines and Airports are experiences the same tight and unglamorous times we are all facing together.

Flight Planning at SkyVector.com

As usual, Skyvector is a fantastic resource for the maps that aviators use and Seatguru can help with finding the best seats on a plane. I'll be more explicit about the resources I use when I put my flight project together.

New Orleans Project: Introduction

On September 16th, 2010 I will be flying to the city of New Orleans to reunite with three of my closest friends: two who have began their adult lives their and one, from Washington D.C., arriving from time spent in Chicago. I neither have the time or the money to enjoy this trip. Hardly a vacation, however, it is my hope that the city will provide me the spark to light the fire of a long career, heat to barbecue my projects and light to illuminate the way.

Earlier in the summer, I took camping trips out to the beach. There, nothing made more sense to me and gave me greater satisfaction than building and maintaining a fire. I find campfires, ancient among man's technologies, particularly graceful. One must begin with kindling, twigs and spark. One by one, an ember appears from twigs hence consumed. These embers provide heat that can dry out logs and larger pieces for burning.

Of course, everybody likes to start a fire, but not everyone is into maintaining and ending one. I admit, during my camping trips, I didn't do a good job of having people trust that I could provide a fire timed well enough to cook food, provide light within the parameters of our available resources. But the experience gave me a powerful lesson during these hard times: that what is right for a sustainable fire is often found at our feet, that these chemical reactions happen after thoughtful preparation and vigilant, well timed operations and that a campfire can turn into a forest fire in the blink of an eye. Fire is no plaything.

Given this what kindling, twigs and logs are available in my landscape? Ultimately, my goal is to provide a resource online that shows why the way I think about the world is not only valuable to to others but also well-intentioned, imbibed with intention. And thus I inaugurate this site with an interactive, map based utility that traces my experiences in New Orleans, LA. I've thought of nothing but the town in the weeks since I've decided to go. The project I create will allow me and anyone else to recreate the five days spent. Due to the characters involved and the color of the setting, may this project testify to history in the making in our generation.

As part of my kindling, I've spent the last three weeks consuming whatever I can concerning the city of New Orleans. I've read about Katrina and the Battle of New Orleans. I've downloaded 10 Gigs of Music and Google Street-viewed my heart's galore. I'd like to present several pieces I find invaluable for my education.



First, HBO's show Treme, whose first season premiered between April and June of 2010. From the creators of The Wire, many have written about the show's social commentary in the wake of Katrina. From my perspective, the characters each chase artistic dreams concerning music, dance, writing, proprietorship, investigation and food. The characters who fill my adventure this September is as follows:

Nick is an aspiring chef, who's lived in 4 different places in the last pair of years. Erik is an Engineer who's living outside of Upstate New York for the first time. Adrienne is a writer of deep Lawyer stock from Washington D.C. And I am a visual artist, map maker and piano player. I am interested in exploring how these artistic pursuits are nourished in the stimulating yet unforgiving landscape of the Garden District.

This article provides a basic rundown of What Not to Do In New Orleans. As per Nicholas Nassim Taleb, it is much more useful to explain to people what not to do, given that our world is filled with things to do and many mistakes waiting to happen. With this article, I seek to avoid cliches and such.



Finally, I'd like to find a second line parade. The Mardi Grad Digest is a resource that covers the business of parades in town, yet the website is intermittently updated. Other local resources for gigs and shows include the Gambit, Where Y'at, Offbeat, Antigravity Magazine and the eternal, WWOZ radio station which broadcasts to anywhere, online. The video above features Young Man Olympian's 126th Anniversary Parade which occurred today.

With this, I cannot wait to go and to report on what I see.