Tag: air travel

  • Screening Your Luggage

    Another weekend, another weekend trip. This time I’m flying to Philadelphia for a quick trip back home. Naturally, I’m going to pack a suitcase so I can bring some things back to Chicago from civilisation. But what happens to my luggage between my checking it and it being loaded onto the aircraft? Thanks to the…

  • Germanwings Flight 4U 9525

    Yesterday an Airbus A320 operated by Germanwings, a subsidiary of Lufthansa, crashed in the French Alps with no survivors. This morning, I am showing the two best graphics I have come across thus far attempting to explain just what happened. The first is from the New York Times. In a series of maps, it points…

  • Air Traffic over London

    Last week, there was a disruption at the air traffic control centre for the United Kingdom. It caused many travel problems. And the BBC included a graphic showing how the problem was shutting down London air space. Credit for the piece goes to the BBC graphics department.

  • FAA Fire in Aurora

    Last Friday a fire in an FAA centre in one of Chicago’s suburbs shut down air traffic in the Chicago area. You know, not a big deal. So the Chicago Tribune made a small graphic to show just how much of a difference a closure of air space can make. Credit for the piece goes…

  • The Decline of the Boeing 747

    This weekend I flew to and from Philadelphia—that is when my flights were not delayed. So I decided to select an aircraft-related graphic for today’s piece, originally from Quartz. It looks at the phasing out of the iconic Boeing 747. (And as for me, well I was on a 737-900 and a CRJ-700—neither as iconic…