
British Airways Digital Billboards Know When A Plane Is Flying Overhead - prostoalex
http://www.fastcompany.com/3022142/fast-feed/british-airways-digital-billboards-know-when-a-plane-is-flying-overhead?utm_source
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joelrunyon
"We hope it will create a real ‘wow’ and people will be reminded how amazing
flying is and how accessible the world can be."

This reminds me of the Louis C.K. bit about how amazing flying is & how
"everything is amazing & nobody is happy."[1]

[1][https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfmmNif5WCw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfmmNif5WCw)

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hnriot
flying has made no progress since the 60's. planes still crawl along and it
takes me 6 hours to get to the East Coast. I'll be wow'd when they make some
progress beyond allowing me to listen to my music during take off.

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ronnier
We have different outlooks on life. I'm thankful and amazed that I have hot
water right in my home, grocery stores filled with selection, heaters to keep
me warm. We are so lucky to have such things and it's amazing what it took to
get us where we are now. Try to build a screw, a single screw that holds one
of these planes together.

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grey-area
_try to build a screw, a single screw_

That's pretty easy if you have a tap and die set, it doesn't require advanced
machine tools.

I agree fantastic progress has been made due to our cooperative societies and
the division of labour though, even just in the last few decades, the advances
are astounding. The Internet alone is an advance at the level of Gutenberg.

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gaius
And a mine, and a smelter... If you had to start from scratch, could you even
make a nail? I couldn't.

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malkia
Our company (based in LA) has party today at Vegas. A friend of mine decided
to take the plane from LA -> Vegas, I took the bus, other people drove their
cars.... And somehow I got 30-60 minutes earlier than him, if not more.
Granted, due to the rain it was much harder for the planes to take off, but
adding checkin time, checkout, taxi to the hotel, etc...

On top of that we had nice 30 minute break with the bus, at not so bad place
(In-N-Out). And plenty of room to play monopoly on the iPad, read books, drink
wine, stroll around, etc.

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yitchelle
I have found that the plane time travel door-to-door is almost slower than
land base transport, especially train. If I travel from Cologne to Paris, car
about 6.5 hrs, train is 3.5 hrs, plane is about 4.5 hrs.

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jheimark
This definitely depends a lot on the airport and distance you are traveling.
San Francisco to New York, Los Angeles to Chicago... America is too big for
land to be faster. Stuff is a closer in Western Europe.

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yitchelle
You are right. The example I gave is probably a bit skewed to faster travel
times. If I had chosen say Barcelona to Moscow, times would have been a lot
different. The other difference is that the trains in western Europe are much
faster than their US counterparts as well.

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dingaling
Clever use of ADS-B signals, which most large commercial aircraft ( and nearly
all British Airways a/c ) now implement. I think the only exceptions in their
fleet are four previous-gen 737s that are near to phase-out.

Accuracy of the co-ordinates broadcast on ADS-B is dependent upon a/c
equipment but for BAW should be around 5 metres.

So receive signals, screen for BAW.* call sign, cross-reference online for
route. I wonder if they include affiliates such as CityFlyer, which fly in BA
livery? Their callsigns are CFE.*.

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lstamour
I was going to say, it would make more sense if they got the data digitally by
knowing pre-registered flight plans and plotting that in 3D. Alternatively,
they could point a camera at the sky and look for "plane-like" objects. Either
would be cheaper than ADS-B hardware. Then I learned you could actually scan
radio signals with software... [http://www.rtl-sdr.com/about-rtl-
sdr/](http://www.rtl-sdr.com/about-rtl-sdr/) Mind blown. :)

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J0415
In reality, I suspect very few people actually notice what is going on in the
ad. Ironically, they /will/ get a lot of 'wow' but mostly from the virality of
the video and maybe award submissions. Which means they need not have produced
the actual signage but just the video and probably would have achieved the
same result. But that would have been too easy to earn them any publicity. How
meta.

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coherentpony
Hmmm. Isn't this just parallax?

