Airfare has always been of some interest to me. I have lived in
the DC/Northern Virginia area my entire life, and less than 20 minutes away is
one of the biggest international airports in the world, The Dulles Airport.
Planes fly by all the time, some get so close they you can see their shadows
driving down 28. Being so close to this sought after zone made me start to
wonder just how many flights there are per day, not just to Dulles, but to all
airports in the United States.
I have never left the country before (I don’t even have a
passport) yet some people fly back and forth between the United States and
other countries quite frequently. That is why I’m choosing to map international
flights, as opposed to domestic or national flights. I would select only commercial
airlines and exclude any military, postal, or private aircraft.
The audience for such a map would mainly be frequent flyers. Though
this would be most helpful for flyers leaving or entering the United States, it
would still be helpful for those staying within state boundaries as well. It is
important for such flyers to know the popularity of U.S airports and the volume
of people going through the doors on a daily basis.
I’m envisioning a map of the United States, without the
exclusion of Hawaii and Alaska. I would definitely have a dot density map, with
each dot representing the number of flights, as well as include color to
represent which airline is being used. This will not only show popularity among
locations but popularity among airline as well.
I would like to collect
my data from the most current date as possible. So far the best I could find is
from 2008 but I am still searching for even newer data. The complexity of the
data is very high due to all the factors that either needs to be taken into
account or excluded. Such factors include: time of day, type of flight, airline,
airport, location, and destination. This WILL NOT be an accurate map, rather
more of a summary.
I will need a basemap of the United States, but it is not necessary
to be broken into counties.
The first step of this project will be to do lots and lots of
research. I am anticipating this to be the hardest part of my project. I have a
few areas of research I could look at, such as the campus library, internet,
and even the Dulles Airport itself might be of some help. My next step will be
to use the gathered data and begin to construct the actual map. I will begin by
selecting one airline and giving it a color to represent it. I will show all
the U.S airports it goes to and apply the dots as necessary. I will continue
this process for each airline and will include a color change. Lastly, one my
map has been constructed I will decide on fonts and play with sizing and apply
it to my blog.
I expect many challenges to arise as I continue this project. A few
include not getting enough accurate information to make a useful map, getting
commercial and non-commercial flights mixed up, as well as getting international
and national flights mixed up.
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