Yesterday we looked at the isolation of the US and Canada in keeping the Boeing 737 Max aircraft in the air. Later that day, both countries grounded those aircraft. Today in the print edition of the New York Times the front page used significant space to chart the vertical speed of the two crashed aircraft.
They are remarkably similar…
It uses the same scale on the y-axis and clearly shows how the aircraft gaining and losing vertical speeds. I am not sure what is gained by the shading below the 0 baseline. I do really enjoy the method of using a chart below the airspeeds to show the periods of increasing and decreasing vertical speed.
Credit for the piece Jin Wu, K.K. Rebecca Lai, and Joe Ward.
On Sunday, a Boeing 737 Max 8 aircraft crashed shortly after taking off from the airport in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. This was the second crash in less than a year, since the another 737 Max 8 crashed into the sea shortly after taking off from Jakarta, Indonesia. And in the intervening months, there have been numerous reports to American regulators from pilots of problems with aircraft in flight. Unsurprisingly, international regulators have begun to take steps to protect their skies and their passengers from what might be an unsafe aircraft. American regulators, the Federal Aviation Administration, remains unconvinced.
Consequently, the New York Times put together a graphics-driven article that details just how extensive the global grounding of 737 Max 8 aircraft has been in the last 24 hours.
There’s a lot more orange than blue.
It’s a route map to headline the article. And it shows that almost all aircraft on 737 Max 8 routes, except for those in Canada and the United States, have been grounded.
The rest of the article makes use of more maps highlighting the countries who civil aviation authorities have grounded flights and popular routes. It also includes a bar chart showing how many 737 Max 8 aircraft are in use with each airline and how many of those airlines have had their fleets grounded.
Overall, it’s a strong article that makes great use of graphics to illustrate its point about the magnitude of the grounding and the isolation of the United States and Canada.
Credit for the piece goes to Denise Lu, Allison McCann, Jin Wu, and K.K. Rebecca Lai.
On Tuesday, Southwest Flight 1380 made an emergency landing here in Philadelphia after the Boeing 737-700’s port engine exploded. One passenger died, reportedly after being partially sucked out of the aircraft after the explosion broke a window. But the pilot managed to land the aircraft with only one engine and without any further deaths.
I wanted to take a look at some of the eventual graphics that would come out to visually explain the story. And as of Thursday, I have seen two: one from the Guardian and another from the New York Times.
The Guardian’s piece is the simpler of the two, but captures the key data. It locates the engine and the location of the window blown out by debris from the engine.
The Guardian’s graphic
The New York Times’ piece is a bit more complex (and accompanied elsewhere in the article by a route map). It shows the seat of the dead passenger and the approximate locations of other passengers who provided quotes detailing their experiences.
The Times’ graphic
So the first thing that struck me was the complexity of the graphic. The Times opted for a three-dimension model whereas the Guardian went with a flat, two-dimensional schematic of the aircraft. Notice, though, that the seating layout is different.
Four rows ahead of the circled window location are two seats, likely an exit row, in the Guardian’s graphic where in the Times’ piece they have a full three-seat configuration. If you check seating charts—seatguru.com was the first site that came up in the Google for me—you can see that neither configuration actually matches what the seating chart says should be the layout for a 737-700. Instead it, the Guardian’s more closely resembles the 737-800 model.
The 737-700 layout from SeatGuru.comThe 737-800 layout from SeatGuru.com
Nerding out on aircraft, I know. But, it is an interesting example of looking at the details in the piece. The Guardian’s piece is far closer to the layout, as least as provided by SeatGuru, and the New York Times’ is more representative of a generic narrow-body aircraft.
Personally, I prefer the Guardian in this case because of its improved accuracy at that level of detail. Though, the New York Times does offer some nice context with the passenger quotes. Unfortunately, the three-dimensional model ultimately provides just a flavour of the story, compared to the drier, but more accurate, schematic depiction of the Guardian.
Credit for the Guardian piece goes to the Guardian’s graphics department.
Credit for the New York Times piece goes to Anjali Singhvi, Sahil Chinoy, and Yuliya Parshina-Kottas.
I have only ever been to Brussels once and that was only to the airport for a brief layover whilst en route to Vilnius for work. I flew Brussels Airlines for the European segment of the trip and I snagged these photos from the in-flight magazine. Felt appropriate today.
The types of aircraft Brussels Airlines flew at the timeThe seating options on Brussels Airlines flightsThe layout of Brussels Airport
Unfortunately it was a short layover and I was exhausted from the flight, so I never had the opportunity to take photographs of the interior wayfinding and graphics.
Credit for the pieces goes to the Brussels Airlines graphics department.
