There are lots of great ideas here, and the design is lovely. But my guess is that many of the design concepts would disintegrate when intersected with the practical considerations of actual airline data and systems.
Totally random side note: my friend Jason Rubin (co-founder of Naughty Dog, which I worked for in the mid 90s) suggested the map-with-flight-path-arcs representation when I showed him prototypes of QPX, ITA's travel planning system, circa 2000. I like the idea visually, but in practice it gets messy (think around-the-world trips).
Yeah I didn't really think of the around the world use case. At that point, you'd need to change the visualization to a globe which would probably confuse most travelers.
Totally random side note: my friend Jason Rubin (co-founder of Naughty Dog, which I worked for in the mid 90s) suggested the map-with-flight-path-arcs representation when I showed him prototypes of QPX, ITA's travel planning system, circa 2000. I like the idea visually, but in practice it gets messy (think around-the-world trips).