Using a Google map interface instead of the sparse one currently being used would really enhance the website. I find it interesting to know what towns or cities that the flight takes me over. To be able to drag the map around and zoon in over the flight path would be very cool.
Google makes it very easy to ‘mash up’ their maps program so it shouldn’t be terribly hard to implement…
discussions.flightaware.com/view … ?p=173#173 for how long the zoom able maps have been requested. It’s “still in the works”.
Personally, I like the simple maps implemented here and hope they remain the same format rather then Google maps if and when zooming and panning of maps get implemented…
I find when I go to websites that use Google for mapping (including panning and zooming) the performance of the website goes down as compared to other websites that use basic mapping techniques for the same thing.
Also extra work on your computer hardware processing the complexities of Google maps where as the simple maps displayed on Flight Aware are easier on the processor.
If I want or need the detail of Google, no biggie to extract the GPS coordinates to a .kml or .kmz file and look at it directly from the Google maps program…
Allen
A LONG time ago (back in the original days of FA), someone wrote a plug-in for Google Earth that would incorporate live data from FA into Google Earth. I know, after a while it stopped working and hasn’t worked since. It was cool when we had it because the track was actually “above” the Earth, and would show climbs and descents.
Come to think of it, with the new updated version of Google Earth, I may dig up the old thread and see if I can get it to work.
Pika, if that works for you, would you please post it back here again.
Well, it worked…kinda, sorta, not really.
The aircraft showed up, but it was stuck in the middle of the Indian Ocean.
Hey! There are far worse places to be stuck. 
Well, i can get it to work, but you have to paste the log data into Excel, remove some stuff, add some stuff, move it all around and paste it back into a Google Earth KML. Then it looks great.
If you pay to use FlightXML, it makes it a lot easier.