Sunday, June 16, 2019

Can You Guess the Airport From its Map?


These nine maps show the nine largest airports in the world by passenger numbers. The airports were chosen based on International Airport Reviews Top 20 Airports list.

Can you identify each airport based only on its map? As a very infrequent flyer I would find this challenge impossible myself. I've therefore included the IATA three letter codes for each airport as a clue (I still wouldn't be able to name eight of the airports). Answers are given at the bottom of this post.

While creating these maps I was reminded of the brilliant Trails of Wind interactive map of global airport runway orientations. More runways around the world are built on a north-south orientation than on a east-west axis. You can see this beautifully visualized on the Trails of Wind map. On this interactive map airport runways around the world are colored based on their orientation.

Answers (select text below to reveal)

London Heathrow (LHR), Shanghai Pudong (PVG), Los Angeles (LAX)

Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta (ATL), Beijing Capital (PEK), Dubai (DXB)

Tokyo Hanenda (HND), O'Hare Chicago (ORD), Hong Kong (HKA)


You might also like to play Name the City from its Road Network and Name the Country From its Rail Network

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The last one should be HKG. The IATA code "HKA" is actually for Blytheville Municipal Airport, Arkansas.

Keir Clarke said...

@anonymous Thanks! You're right of course. I've now corrected the three letter code for Hong Kong.