[talk-ph] Flight paths in OSM

[Eugene Alvin Villar]

Hi guys,

There are currently flight paths data in OSM such as the Manila-Davao
path, Manila-Singapore path, Manila-Bacolod path, and maybe others. I
personally don't think these would be useful in OSM per se. Maybe in
another website that collects GPS flight tracks. Take note that
flights do not generally stick to a fixed path and this depends on the
time of day, weather conditions, air traffic levels and other
variables. Thus, a particular path collected by GPS is not necessarily
the "real" path.

On the other hand, we can say the same thing for ferry routes but we
map these anyway. On the other hand again, ferry routes do not overlap
other data in a confusing way, which flight paths do. (I think I've
seen a node on the Davao-Manila flight path merged with a POI node in
Cavite once before.)

This issue has been discussed recently in other parts of the OSM community:
http://help.openstreetmap.org/questions/297/does-it-make-sense-to-upload-aviation-tracks-to-osm
http://www.mail-archive.com/talk@openstreetmap.org/msg33802.html

What do you guys think? Should we retain and add flight path data or
do we remove them?

Eugene (osm:seav)