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| Subject:
Airline Flight Paths
Category: Miscellaneous Asked by: wlybrand-ga List Price: $5.00 |
Posted:
06 Jun 2005 17:18 PDT
Expires: 06 Jul 2005 17:18 PDT Question ID: 530126 |
I fly form San Antonio to Los Angeles and back quite frequently. I would like to see a map of the flight path that Southwest 'usually' takes (usually because I'm sure it changes). I would then be able to pull up google maps+satellite and see the landmarks, features, etc that I've seen from the air and know where and what they are. I have been googling for 'flight path' 'traffic control' 'air traffic' and even visited Southwest's website. Does anyone know where I can find a map like this or if it exists? |
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| Subject:
Re: Airline Flight Paths
Answered By: byrd-ga on 10 Jun 2005 09:57 PDT Rated:  |
Hi wlybrand-ga, In my comment I provided you with a flight plan of the path SW Airlines "usually" takes between San Antonio and Los Angeles. But since you specifically asked for a map of the route, I did a little more checking around, and found some very cool mapping tools that accept lat/long coordinates instead of just location names, which will give you a more accurate picture of your route. Most of these tools require you to have latitude and longitude in decimal format, so I went ahead and converted the lat/long info from my comment into decimal for you, thus: San Antonio, 29.5336944, -98.4697778 LEJON intersection, 30.112867, -99.121967 SHUCK intersection, 30.507361, -101.292881 Ft.Stockton, 30.9156667, -102.9161389 El Paso, 31.8066667, -106.3778056 San Simon, 32.2692450 , -109.2630875 29 Palms, 34.1315972, -115.9458219 Ontario, 33.9183369, -117.5299972 Los Angeles, 33.9425361, -118.4080744 If you'd like to play around sometime with some other routes and places, here's a converter for converting standard lat/long to decimal http://www.uky.edu/KGS/gis/converter.htm Remember that West longitude and South latitude are always negative. Some other tools require Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM) coordinates instead, so here's a tool to get those numbers: http://home.hiwaay.net/~taylorc/toolbox/geography/geoutm.html And here are the UTM coordinates for your route: Name, Longitude(x), Latitude(y), Zone, Hemisphere San Antonio, 551376.4700854371, 3267233.92354047, 14, N LEJON, 488249.8950254927, 3331298.3122543204, 14, N SHUCK, 279961.8276731642, 3377243.0531815896, 14, N Ft.Stockton, 699133.7497986328, 3422116.780787621, 13, N El Paso, 369580.93073328404, 3519833.0599216195, 13, N San Simon, 663590.2907608951, 3571604.2122034393, 12, N 29 Palms, 597202.7311336224, 3777249.141856609, 11, N Ontario, 451008.8550835113, 3753227.8361102296, 11, N Los Angeles, 369874.9151043745, 3756677.4214261714, 11, N Here are the mapping tools: =========================================== GPS Visualizer This site lets you input your coordinates, and then serves up a detailed topographic map: http://www.gpsvisualizer.com/map?form=waypoints You'll need to download this free viewer to see it: http://www.adobe.com/svg/viewer/install/ ============================================ USA PhotoMaps This free downloadable software uses images from Microsoft's Terra Server to create a route map superimposed on an aerial photo. Very cool, although there *is* a learning curve as far as using it, but the instructions help a lot. Download: http://jdmcox.com/ Instructions: http://www.digitalgrove.net/USAPhotoMaps_Instructions.htm ============================================ Map-It A form-based simple map generator. It shows topographical details, but without names of features. Still, easy to use and a nice color output. I made a map of your route, but couldn't get a usable link to it. However, it's fairly easy to use: http://stellwagen.er.usgs.gov/mapit/ For the coordinates, copy/past this list: -98.4697778 29.5336944 -99.121967 30.112867 -101.292881 30.507361 -102.9161389 30.9156667 -106.3778056 31.8066667 -109.2630875 32.2692450 -115.9458219 34.1315972 -117.5299972 33.9183369 -118.4080744 33.9425361 And for the labels, use this one: -98.5 29.5 8 0 3 3 San Antonio -99.1 30.1 8 0 3 3 LEJON -101.3 30.5 8 0 3 3 SHUCK -102.9 30.9 8 0 3 3 Ft.Stockton -106.4 31.8 8 0 3 3 El Paso -109.3 32.3 8 0 3 3 San Simon -115.9 34.1 8 0 3 2 29 Palms -117.5 33.9 8 0 3 4 Ontario -118.4 33.9 8 0 3 3 Los Angeles ============================================ Finally, here's a link to Microsoft's TerraServer, which has free satellite images of the world, though apparently not the option to plot a route. Still it does accept coordinates, and has nice images, so might be worth a look: http://terraserver.microsoft.com/ Hope you have fun finding and identifying images of the terrain over which you're flying. One interesting note: aside from a turn to the northwest right after takeoff, and another to the west before landing, the route in general is nearly a straight as-the-crow-flies line between San Antonio and LA, in a general WNW direction. Additional search terms I used for finding maps: [free online route map tool latitude longitude] [free aerial maps online] Best wishes, Byrd-ga | |
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wlybrand-ga
rated this answer:
and gave an additional tip of:
$5.00
I couldn't have asked for a better answer. It was a hard question as well. |
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| Subject:
Re: Airline Flight Paths
From: byrd-ga on 08 Jun 2005 13:42 PDT |
Hi wlybrand-ga, Actually, you don't need to go buy a lot of charts or flight sim software to get the map you want. And as Omnivorous-ga said, even if you did purchase them, aeronautical charts of the type likely used by SWA aren't going to have the topographical features you want. But there is a way to go about finding the information you want. Here?s how: First of all, here's an online flight simulator site that has a .zip file containing standard Southwest Airlines flight plans, current as of May 2005: http://www.fsbuild.com/flight_plans.html You can download them to your computer, then open them as a text file, which is what I did. These flight plans are probably compiled from historical flight data, or flight tracking information, etc. The source isn't really important for your purpose, nor is the fact that they may vary somewhat from actual routes. As you indicated in your question, you're already aware that flight paths can and do vary from time to time. However, I can verify that the flight plan for your route contained in this .zip is pretty close, because I've also flown that route several times. Well, not exactly, since I've flown out of Austin, not San Antonio, but it's close enough, and I recognize the flight path as being a pretty standard one for SWA. The only tricky part about the flight plan is being able to translate it, but I can help you there. First of all, here's the flight plan: KSAT. BOWIE3 SHUCK J138 FST J2 ELP J50 SSO J4 TNP PDZ4. KLAX Looks confusing, but it's not that bad when you take it apart. Each of the collections of numbers and letters indicates either an airport, an airway (jet route in this case), an intersection, or a navaid (radio transmitter), or the name of a procedure that contains some of these. The location and lat/long of all of these can be found at http://www.airnav.com/ The trick is to know what you're looking up, whether airport, navaid or fix. Here's how this one works out. KSAT = San Antonio, TX Lat/Long 29-32-01.3000N / 098-28-11.2000W BOWIE3 = the name of a departure procedure that takes you northwest from the airport to an intersection called LEJON (just north of Kerrville, TX) Lat/Long 30-06-46.310N / 099-07-19.080W , from there taking a left turn to the southwest, then a right turn to the northwest to SHUCK = (intersection SW of San Angelo, TX and SE of Ft. Stockton, TX) Lat/Long 30-30-26.500N/101-17-34.370W from here picking up J138 = the name of a high altitude jet route that will take you over FST = Ft. Stockton, TX Lat/Long 30-54-56.4000N / 102-54-58.1000W thence via J2 = jet route 2 to ELP = El Paso, TX Lat/Long 31-48-24.0000N / 106-22-40.1000W , thence via J50 = jet route 50, to SSO = a radio transmitter (or VORTAC) located at San Simon, AZ Lat/Long 32-16-09.282N/109-15-47.115W , thence via J4 = jet route 4, to TNP = Twenty Nine Palms, CA Lat/Long 34-07-53.7500N / 115-56-44.9590W thence via PDZ4 or TNP.PDZ4 Arrival = the name of an arrival procedure to Southern California (or SoCal) airspace. I don't have that procedure in front of me since my chart subscription doesn't include California, however, the procedure will take you to another VORTAC called PDZ, which is at Ontario, CA Lat/Long 33-55-06.013N/117-31-47.990W , and from there into KLAX = Los Angeles Lat/Long 33-56-33.1301N / 118-24-29.0680W Ok, like I said, this may change slightly. But since you'll be flying at very high altitudes, some variation in navaids or fixes ought not to make a whole lot of difference to you in terms of geographic features and topography. If you pull up Google maps, and input the names of the cities over which you'll be flying, i.e. San Antonio, TX Kerrville, TX Fort Stockton, TX El Paso, TX San Simon, AZ Twenty Nine Palms, CA Ontario, CA Los Angeles, CA you ought to be able to locate a fairly good route map and satellite photos. If you have access to a GPS or other map service that lets you input latitude and longitude, then you can get a more exact route. For your information, I used the search term [southwest airlines "route map" OR routes OR "flight plans"] to fine the site that had the actual flight plan, then simply went to AirNav, which I already had in my bookmarks, to get the rest of the info. I hope you're able to have fun with this. I know I did, thanks for the idea! I think I'll use it next time I need to fly somewhere by airlines. Make looking out the window a lot more interesting! Best wishes, and happy flying! Byrd-ga |
| Subject:
Re: Airline Flight Paths
From: omnivorous-ga on 10 Jun 2005 10:19 PDT |
Wlybrand -- There's actually a much easier way to see SAT-LAX flight paths, though it has its own limitations. And realize too, that though Byrd-GA has given you one routing, Southwest Airlines dispatch will vary that route for things such as traffic, turbulence and particularly, winds aloft. These changes in flight routes will make dramatic differences, sometimes flying as far south as the Mexican border. First, you want to do the following: * go to Southewest's page to get the flight numbers of SAT-LAX flights http://www.southwest.com/cgi-bin/requestSchedule Second, a travel company called Cheaptickets.com runs a "Flight Tracker" service that you can find on the link below. The graphical flight tracker will give you some topographic information and the locations of major cities. NOTE: you can only track active flights, but there are so many between SAT and LAX that you'll almost always see one in the air. A second caution on using this page is that Southwest flights may have more than one number on the schedule, but they'll only file one of those numbers with Air Traffic Control: http://www.cheaptickets.com/trs/cheaptickets/content/travel_tools/main_travel_tools.xsl The Java applet on the page will update for a period of time and you should be able to print out the maps and ATC data, which includes airspeed and altitude. Easier than programming GPS waypoints! Oh, and don't forget to look for Area 54. Best regards, Omnivorous-GA |
| Subject:
Re: Airline Flight Paths
From: byrd-ga on 10 Jun 2005 11:40 PDT |
Hi wlybrand-ga, Thank you very much for the kind words, five stars and very generous tip! I'm so glad you were pleased! Also, I agree that using flight tracking is a good idea, though it'll take you the length of a flight to get the entire track, and then you'll still likely need to input data into a map site or software to get the topographical detail and landmarks, etc. you're wanting. But it certainly can help you collect a wider range of routes over a shorter period of time than it probably would take waiting for more updates to the sim data. Here's another flight tracker for you with a nice zoom feature: http://www.aeroseek.com/webtrax/ By the time you're finished, you're going to be quite an expert on Southwestern US geography! Happy flying and mapping! And thanks again! Cheers, Byrd-ga |
| Subject:
Re: Airline Flight Paths
From: adamschneider-ga on 28 Jun 2005 18:49 PDT |
"byrd-ga" mentioned GPS Visualizer's waypoint map form... there's another page on GPS Visualizer that will actually plot a great circle route between two points: http://www.gpsvisualizer.com/calculators.html Of course, airplanes don't really fly great circle routes, but it's an interesting exercise at any rate. |
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