The other day I stumbled upon an excellent post from a fellow blogger about fake subway maps infographics (I wish, I saved the link when I got it off Twitter, but I didn’t, sorry). I don’t know which rock I’ve lived under for the last few years, but until I checked them out, I’d never thought how truly awesome this kind of infographics is. Now, I might be hopelessly stuck in the 90-s, but I don’t like infographics. As soon as we discard the coolness factor, most of them are simply useless; they are either complex, incomplete, vague, or downright ridiculous (although that is not the fault of the medium).
In any case, what’s frustrated me a lot about infographics, is why even bother making them, if most are harder to understand than plain text?
Enter fake subway maps. What a thing of beauty!
Doesn’t matter how long I’ve been in this hobby, I can’t remember all these transfer partners by heart, and honestly, why should I? The whole idea of a subway map is to translate a lot of information into a signal or an idea that is easy to follow — whatever background, education and experience you might have. So here is my first experiment. Imperfect, it might be, but see if you like it or not anyway, and tell me what you would like me to with them in the future.
Not your thing? Don’t worry. Here is an old-fashioned, but still color-coded table.
Legend:
- Airlines in GREEN: transfer is available from 4 programs
- ORANGE: 3 programs
- RED: 2 programs
- BLUE: 1 program
| SPG | AMEX MR | Diners Club | CITI ThankYou | Chase UR |
| British Airways | British Airways | British Airways | British Airways | |
| Singapore Airlines | Singapore Airlines | Singapore Airlines | Singapore Airlines | |
| Virgin Atlantic | Virgin Atlantic | Virgin Atlantic | Virgin Atlantic | |
| Air Canada | Air Canada | Air Canada | ||
| Air France & KLM | Air France & KLM | Air France & KLM | ||
| Cathay Pacific | Cathay Pacific | Cathay Pacific | ||
| Delta Air Lines | Delta Air Lines | Delta Air Lines | ||
| Hawaiian Airlines | Hawaiian Airlines | Hawaiian Airlines | ||
| Thai Airways | Thai Airways | Thai Airways | ||
| Alaska Airlines | Alaska Airlines | |||
| Alitalia | Alitalia | EVA Air | EVA Air | |
| All Nippon Airways (ANA) | All Nippon Airways (ANA) | |||
| Emirates | Emirates | |||
| Etihad Airways | Etihad Guest | |||
| Qatar Airways | Qatar Airways | |||
| El Al | El AL | |||
| AeroMexico | AeroMexico | Southwest | Southwest | |
| Frontier Airlines | Garuda Indonesia | Korean Air | ||
| Air Berlin | Iceland Air | Malaysia Airlines | United | |
| Air China | Iberia Airline | SAS Scandinavian Airlines | Qantas Airlines | |
| Air New Zealand | JetBlue Airways | South African Airways | ||
| GOL Airlines | Virgin America | |||
| Hainan Airlines | ||||
| American Airlines | ||||
| Asiana Airlines | ||||
| China Eastern Airlines | ||||
| China Southern | ||||
| Japan Airlines (JAL) | ||||
| Jet Airways | ||||
| LAN | ||||
| Lufthansa | ||||
| Arabian Saudi Airlines | ||||
| United Airlines |
And here are the infographics. I was thinking of doing it all in one map, but I decided against it. That would be too clumsy. So the first map is what I call megastations. Those are the airline that are the members of four credit card programs. And the rest are all the others. Enjoy!
Legend:
SPG Transfer Partners
AMEX Transfer Partners
Citi TU Transfer Partners
Diners Transfer Partners
Chase UR Transfer Partners
Airline Transfer Subway Map 1: Megastations
Airline Transfer Subway Map – 2
Let me know what you think, and how I can make it better.
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Shouldn’t United have a green line to it?
Thanks, David, great catch. Fixed, and also removed China Southern from the SPG partners, since they don’t seem to offer the transfer any longer.
well done!
Thanks!