OurAirports: Site News

Over 200 former Soviet air bases

Sat, 23 Feb 2008 16:26:18 -0500

I've added over 200 former Soviet air bases, mostly in Russia, but also in the Ukraine, Belarus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Kazakhstan. Many of these have been abandoned (they're not all marked abandoned yet, but I'm working on it), some have been converted to civilian use, and some are still in military use. Most have no ICAO or IATA identifiers, and do not appear in any official civilian publications. Thanks to the many Wikipedia contributors for tracking these down.

This addition doubles the number of Russian airports to nearly 300. There must be many more in such a large country, but I haven't found a source yet.

Here's an example of an abandoned airstrip that was probably meant to serve in any conflict with China:

http://www.ourairports.com/airports/RU-0967/

Data downloads

Sat, 02 Feb 2008 12:38:50 -0500

There are now CSV-formatted files (you can load them into a spreadsheet or database) available for airports, countries, and regions, updated nightly. Use the "Downloads" link in the left sidebar, or go here:

http://www.ourairports.com/data/

Over 700 additional Western European airports

Tue, 29 Jan 2008 12:10:05 -0500

I've just added more than 700 additional Western European airports for Ireland, the UK, France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Austria. These all come from Paul Tomblin's database at

http://www.navaid.com/

These include some North Sea oil platforms (mostly Norwegian) -- you can see them if you zoom in closely enough on the big map:

http://www.ourairports.com/big-map.html#lat=57.43312382526987,lon=4.449462890625,zoom=7,type=Hybrid

277 new German airports

Mon, 28 Jan 2008 22:01:09 -0500

I've added 277 new German airports using data available from SoaringWeb.org -- although the info is over 10 years old, it looks pretty good from spot checks, and adds a lot of smaller airports that were missing from the DAFIF. Unfortunately, they're not categorized by state yet.

Search now supports latitude/longitude

Mon, 21 Jan 2008 20:07:41 -0500

You can now find the closest airports to a latitude/longitude by entering the coordinates into the regular search field. Many different formats work, such as "45 30N 75 30W" or "45.5,-75.5". Here's an example:

http://www.ourairports.com/search?q=45.5+-75.5

321 Canadian seaplane bases added

Thu, 17 Jan 2008 11:24:36 -0500

Thanks to George Plews, who has painstakingly transcribed data for all the water aerodromes in the Canadian Water Aerodrome Supplement, there are now 321 new Canadian seaplane bases at OurAirports. George's web site is here:

http://www.plews.ca/AirportsinCanada.htm

Over 6,000 heliports and seaplane bases added

Wed, 16 Jan 2008 22:16:35 -0500

The site has just added 507 seaplane bases from the U.S., and 5,911 heliports from the U.S. and Canada. I'll add seaplane bases and heliports from the rest of the world as soon as I find a public data source.

Mark places (FBOs, restaurants, etc.) in and around airports

Sat, 12 Jan 2008 15:30:35 -0500

I've just added the ability for members to define new places around an airport (such as FBOs, fuel pumps, parking, restaurants, customs, bus stops, etc.), and for any visitors to leave comments about those places. It's a bit rough still, but it seems to be working. A list of places defined (if any) appears in the right sidebar under the airport info.

Currently, only the member who first defines a place can edit or tag it, but I plan to make place-management collaborative, like Wikipedia, so that anyone can add tags. Anyone -- even an anonymous flyer -- can leave comments on the places, just as with airports (in fact, the comments roll up to the airport comments automatically).

The ability for members to add new airports and edit existing ones is also coming soon.

Comment threads

Mon, 31 Dec 2007 16:39:43 -0500

You can now view an entire comment thread (a comment and its replies) by selecting the "view thread" link in any comment. When I have more time, I'll indent them to show the different subthreads. Here's an example:

http://www.ourairports.com/comments/threads/382/

News and announcements

Sat, 22 Dec 2007 17:01:19 -0500

Welcome to the new news and announcements system in OurAirports -- you can use this to stay up to date on the site's latest developments. To subscribe to these announcements as a blog, point your weblog reader to http://www.ourairports.com/news/feed.rss

I'm planning a lot of enhancements to the site soon, including user annotations on maps (with comments, of course) and an ability to invite other members as trusted friends. Stay tuned!