Bing Airport Maps Take Off

A new Bing airport maps feature could help travelers navigate their way through major U.S. airports as well as helping people pick up arrivals. The feature rolled out in Sept. 2011 with 42 major U.S. hub airports, including Newark, NJ; Minneapolis, MN; LaGuardia and John F. Kennedy in the New York, NY, area; and Los Angeles International and Ontario in the Los Angeles, CA, area. Maps for additional airports are expected to roll out regularly. The maps are available directly from Bing or linked from flight status pages when searching by flight number. The maps display parking garages and baggage claim, ticket counters, and terminals and gates, as well as airlines and restaurants serving the airport. Like Bing’s shopping mall maps, the airport maps are also included in Bing’s venue search APIs, providing navigation that can be embedded into third-party Web sites, which could allow airport vendors to provide better navigation to their facilities for Bing users. More information on Bing airport maps is available at www.bing.com/community/site_blogs/b/maps/archive/2011/09/29/new-airport-maps-for-bing.aspx.