British Airways Digital Billboards Know When A Plane Is Flying Overhead
fastcompany.com
fastcompany.com
This reminds me of the Louis C.K. bit about how amazing flying is & how "everything is amazing & nobody is happy."[1]
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.
I still think Concorde could have been made to work in the end if it had been improved over time.
The planes were getting more expensive to maintain and there was nothing coming to replace them.
Safety enhancements?
Not to mention flying is much cheaper than it used to be, adjusted for inflation.
Well those are certainly improvements, but they're basically hacks around the fact that flying is now slower than it was in the past.
The biggest impediment to speed today is the dreaded 'Cost Index' which nearly all airlines now implement. I think Boeing have a different term, but it's the same idea; the crew are given a target CI which they punch into the flight management computer and which then determines the Mach number according to the cost-saving target.
Flying from Belfast to London is now timetabled at 20 minutes longer than in 1973, regardless of the extra standing-in-line at either end.
The price of a cross-country fare, adjusted for inflation, is a small fraction of what it used to be.
The planes themselves are massively more fuel-efficient, reliable and safe.
You have on-board live television and internet on many flights.
These are all significant gains. Meanwhile, passengers voted with their wallets on supersonic airliners; the time saved (4-4.5 hours on a transatlantic Concorde flight) were not seen as worth the significantly higher fares.
Video without the other guys watching the video...
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.
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.*.