
Show HN: Airport Locations from Around the World - ArashPartow
http://www.partow.net/miscellaneous/airportdatabase/
======
phsource
I can't stress just how important (and how hard) it is to get a great source
of data for airports, so kudos on the work! When building All the Flight Deals
([https://alltheflightdeals.com](https://alltheflightdeals.com)) and
BookWithMatrix ([https://bookwithmatrix.com](https://bookwithmatrix.com)),
airport data was essential.

It seems like your database covers the basics! However, timezone data and
airport type/size were pretty important information for us, so we ended up
getting these from:

\- OpenFlights [1]: this dataset was great since it had timezone too, which
was really helpful for calculating flight lengths, etc.

\- OurAirports [2]: no timezone here, but the "type" and "scheduled_service"
columns in this dataset are essential. "Type" lets you distinguish between
small/medium/large airports, and "scheduled_service" lets you easily filter
out airports without real flights (which you often might not care about).

\- IATA tzmap [3]: this was used for filling in timezone data and is derived
from the Geonames database.

\- Random other GitHub Gist [4]: I have no idea where this data comes from,
but it was surprisingly complete and has a few golden nuggets like
"num_flights" and "runway_length" in addition to "timezone". The presence of a
"woeid" suggests Yahoo-related origins, but it's hard to be sure.

Long story short, it'd be AWESOME to have one complete, updated database with
all this data in one place, but part of the struggle is definitely having more
data than just longitude/latitude.

[1]
[https://github.com/jpatokal/openflights/](https://github.com/jpatokal/openflights/)

[2] [http://ourairports.com/data/](http://ourairports.com/data/)

[3]
[https://raw.githubusercontent.com/hroptatyr/dateutils/tzmaps...](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/hroptatyr/dateutils/tzmaps/iata.tzmap;)
[http://download.geonames.org/export/dump/](http://download.geonames.org/export/dump/)

[4]
[https://gist.github.com/tdreyno/4278655](https://gist.github.com/tdreyno/4278655)

~~~
ryandrake
Don’t forget that time zone boundaries often change, so if you are going to
store a “time zone” field, make sure you regularly update them.

You are right about the lack of availability of complete airport data. This is
true for many things aviation related, including airspace boundaries,
navigation aids, etc. Basically anything you would find on a pilot’s chart.
The USA is a wonderful exception as they publish a great deal of info
digitally and for free, but this is not true for most other countries. Many
countries cartographic offices (or their private contractors) even claim
copyright over basic facts like “airport ABC is at location X” and “navaid DEF
transmits on frequency 123”. It’s crazy that information that potentially
could save lives are locked up behind rent extracting corporations and
intellectual property laws.

~~~
yazan94
> Don’t forget that time zone boundaries often change

I always thought time zones boundaries were static... TIL

~~~
dagw
Actual time zone boundaries have on average 2-3 changes a year. Sudan recently
hopped back an hour for example, a separatist state in eastern Ukraine
switched to Moscow time and Russia changed the time zones of a bunch of cities
last year.

What does happen more often is people screwing around with Daylight savings.
Each year probably a dozen countries decide to change how they're going to do
daylight savings, either by canceling or reintroducing it or moving the date
when the changeover happens. And the you get some real oddities like Morocco
(I think it was) a few years ago the decided to temporarily suspend daylights
saving during Ramadan (what do you mean your software cannot handle having an
arbitrary number of dates for the start and end of daylight saving each year)

------
FabHK
This is a small sample of airports; would be interesting to know how they were
selected.

> airports big and small from all around the world

Well, presumably mostly big.

The CIA Facebook shows 13500 airports for the USA alone, and 6 countries with
more than 1000 [0]. So, when you count smaller airports (potentially
untowered, or unpaved runways), there is way more than what's listed here.

Most countries (ICAO members) maintain an AIP (Aeronautical Information
Publication, [1]) which lists the bigger airports in a country (and definitely
the international ones with immigration and customs facilities) in part AD
(aerodromes) and is often readily downloadable from the pertinent national
civil aviation authority [2].

However, information on smaller airfields is often quite hard to come by.

I've flown small airplanes around in southern Africa and Thailand, and relied
on websites, books, and aviation clubs to find coordinates for airfields. See
eg. the _Airfields Directory of Southern Africa_ [3] or Tom Claytor's list at
the bottom of the Thai Flying Club website [4].

[0] [https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-
factbook/...](https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-
factbook/rankorder/2053rank.html)

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeronautical_Information_Publi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeronautical_Information_Publication)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_civil_aviation_authori...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_civil_aviation_authorities)

[3]
[http://www.cometaviationsupplies.co.za/index.php?route=produ...](http://www.cometaviationsupplies.co.za/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=969)

[4] [http://www.thaiflyingclub.com](http://www.thaiflyingclub.com)

EDIT: typos, clarity

~~~
javindo
Is there a clear definition between airfield and airport? Or rather, is there
a distinction between places you can land a plane vs places an individual can
buy a ticket to fly with an airline? I imagine this line gets blurred in
certain countries more so than others, perhaps that's what the posted dataset
is more geared towards?

------
skun
Had some time today so put together a .Net client for this data [0][1] in case
anyone is interested.

[0]:
[https://github.com/shrayasr/GlobalAirports.Net](https://github.com/shrayasr/GlobalAirports.Net)
[1]:
[https://www.nuget.org/packages/GlobalAirports.Net](https://www.nuget.org/packages/GlobalAirports.Net)

------
jka
OpenFlights also has great data[0] here - and not just for airports, but also
train stations, airline/carrier codes, and routes (i.e. origin/destination
pairs with a carrier).

No sign of schedules from them yet, but there's been a request-for-interest on
the site regarding those for a few years now.

[0] - [https://openflights.org/data.html](https://openflights.org/data.html)

~~~
jpatokal
OpenFlights maintainer here. Thanks for the kudos, although our airport data
is primarily from OurAirports.com these days.

Re: schedules, I've finally got a good lead on a way to obtain data without
relying on the OAG/Innovata duopoly. Stay tuned.

~~~
marsRoverDev
I am super interested in that final point of yours. Any more details you can
share?

Also, I owe you a beer in real life for enabling my app to exist.

~~~
jpatokal
Sorry, not at this stage, but please tell me more about your use case & sign
up to be notified:

[https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSe7wl5eKTraibp0l6cS...](https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSe7wl5eKTraibp0l6cS6pidGqRPGtOq1z8mp8kWbcy3OSqftg/viewform)

And OpenFlights accepts donations ;)

------
edshiro
Great stuff! I was working on a project where we needed a database of all
airports around the world. I used
[http://ourairports.com/data/](http://ourairports.com/data/) IIRC. Out of
curiosity, what's different in your project? Also, would be good to add the
type of airport (e.g. airfield, airport, etc.).

Best of luck!

~~~
jpatokal
Came here to post this: OurAirports seems to be much more comprehensive, does
GADB have any advantage over this? Also, where is GADB's data sources from?

------
vojnovski
Opentraveldata
([https://github.com/opentraveldata/opentraveldata](https://github.com/opentraveldata/opentraveldata))
is generally a great source for travel related data, based mostly on Geobases
and Wikipedia. Its OAG extract is a bit old, but all airport data (and more)
can be found in
[https://github.com/opentraveldata/opentraveldata/blob/master...](https://github.com/opentraveldata/opentraveldata/blob/master/opentraveldata/optd_por_public.csv),
which is refreshed on an almost daily basis. There are other data sources in
the same folder.

Also,
[https://github.com/opentraveldata/geobases](https://github.com/opentraveldata/geobases)
is a fun way to play around with Geonames/Optd data.

------
carl_dr
From your site, "Two closest airports: At 370m apart are the Horsching
International Airport and Linz Aiports in Austria."

From Wikipedia, "Linz Airport, also known as Blue Danube Airport Linz and
formerly Hörsching Airport"

Are you sure they aren't one and the same?

------
partycoder
I think China has more airports than the ones listed in the site.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airports_in_China#/med...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airports_in_China#/media/File:China_Airports.png)

~~~
ArashPartow
Thank-you for that link. I will be updating the DB in the coming month and
China is one of the countries to have updated entries.

~~~
phillc73
En Route Supplement Australia (ERSA) might be helpful:

[http://www.airservicesaustralia.com/aip/aip.asp?pg=40&vdate=...](http://www.airservicesaustralia.com/aip/aip.asp?pg=40&vdate=09-Nov-2017&ver=1)

Unfortunately, you'll need to deal with PDFs, but they are data rich:

[http://www.airservicesaustralia.com/aip/current/ersa/FAC_YSC...](http://www.airservicesaustralia.com/aip/current/ersa/FAC_YSCO_09-Nov-2017.pdf)

------
austincheney
This site has a total of 9300 airports. The CIA lists 13513 airports in just
the US - [https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-
factbook/...](https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-
factbook/fields/2053.html#us)

~~~
geff82
Thank you for mentioning that! I could not believe when I saw "my" Germany so
close to the US, because for Germany, this number must include every little
sailplane field and a lot must be missing from the US. What I really wondered
about is the pattern by which airports have been included. Where 100% private
airports not included (because the US has an immense number of privately owned
airstrips)? Even Flight Simulator X had about 20.000 airports worldwide ten
years back. I also think that the USA have almost as many airports as the rest
of the world combined. There are countries where private flying and airport
building is virtually non-existent (take Iran for example) or heavily
regulated (take Europe). So this database might be a starting point, but I
wonder if there are no better databases available. May be: not for free.

~~~
austincheney
The US has a lot of hobby airstrips. Let me explain it like this.

I live in northern Fort Worth. To the south of me there is a little
international airport named Meacham. To the north of me there is a much large
freight airport named Alliance. Down the street from my house is a small
airport for personally owned airplanes. A little more than 5 miles from my
house is a neighborhood built around an airstrip for personally owned
airplanes.

Then of course there are the big airports that most people actually use: Love
Field, DFW, Addison Executive. DFW is one of the largest and busiest airports
in the world and you still have all these other airports around. Go to Fort
Worth on Google Maps and search for Airports. There are some smaller airfields
that don't show up even though you have all these results.

Flying is extremely regulated in the US, but that regulation is not super
strict unless you are flying aircraft of a certain size or carry passengers.
You have to be a certified pilot just to fly drones of a certain size.

------
destigogo
OpenFlights is really awesome, we used it to build
[https://destigogo.com](https://destigogo.com)

Any other tips for complete airport datasets?

------
fludlight
Anyone have a free/inexpensive source for regularly updated airport pairs for
scheduled airline flights?

~~~
stevekemp
If you're only interested in "local" data then you might be able to obtain it
via a software radio.

I have a cheap USB receiver hooked up to my PC so I can watch the aircraft
"overhead" in real-time. Annoyingly it loses the signal when the aircraft get
too low, so I cannot see them landing.

~~~
edpichler
Very interesting, do you have a blog post about this?

~~~
stevekemp
As it happens I do:

[https://blog.steve.fi/tracking_aircraft_in_real_time__via_so...](https://blog.steve.fi/tracking_aircraft_in_real_time__via_software_defined_radio.html)

------
cwt137
I’m looking for something similar for shipping ports. Anyone know where I can
find it?

------
thriftwy
It doesn't have Moscow Domodedovo. That's number ten maybe in europe's top100,
with 30 mln passengers actually. What use does this DB have with holes like
these? F for effort.

