Adventures in Airport Mapping


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A decent chunk of my time in work the past few years has been flying--and that only seems to be increasing in time. Now that I live in LA, it's a bit easier to take a fairly cheap flight on personal vacation, too, so I have seen quite a few airports. When laying over, I play it safe by choosing gaps from 2 to 5 hours. That gives me time to eat, reacclimate to surface pressure, and use the airport amenities (remember, part of your plane fare includes terminal fees).

Most importantly for this part of my website, though, is that I get a chance to walk the terminal and survey the various restaurants, stores, amenities, ATMs, lounges, and other components of the airport. In my experience, US airport terminals have been missing a great deal of detail because they are not places that have importable data and they are not somewhere you can just walk into and survey. I consider airports to be a positive opportunity for people to use OpenStreetMap for finding a specific feature since travelers generally have their phones out during travel and they are on foot, allowing them to look at their phone. Thus, this page highlights my mapping at various airports around the world in pursuit of this goal.