5. Los Angeles International Airport (LAX)

Starting out at number 5, we find ourselves in the never-ending sun of Los Angeles, California. Between January and May 2011, the Los Angeles International Airport served an astonishing 24,230,832 passengers, all while competing with four other airports in the Los Angeles area. LAX is designed so that each terminal’s arrival gate feeds directly to the exit, and its eastbound approach over the Pacific Ocean is known for terrifying new flyers!

4. O’Hare International Airport (ORD)

Nestled west of downtown Chicago we find the fourth busiest airport in the world, O’Hare International Airport. ORD is perhaps the most intriguing airport on our list to look at from above, due to its centralised design being surrounded by six intersecting runways. From January to May of 2011, O’Hare handled 25,986,415 passengers in its busy and sometimes frantic terminals. The weather around Chicago has been known to leave its mark on O’Hare as well – in 2010 1 out of every 5 flights (21.5%) into O’Hare was delayed by more than 15 minutes.²

Like most busy airports around the world, O’Hare is expanding through its own modernisation plan. Evidence can be seen from above in the form of a new east-west runway being built at the south end of the airport.

3. London Heathrow Airport (LHR)

Ranking number three in our list, we find the busiest airport in the EU and the airport that handles more international passengers than anywhere else, London’s Heathrow Airport. In the first half of 2011, Heathrow saw 26,733,585 passengers, which is logistically impressive when you consider LHR only has 2 runways, and it’s also competing with London’s four other airports! In what is becoming a common theme, the airport’s terminals are centrally located in this mess between the runways, with the exception of an international terminal on the south end of the airfield.

What would the world’s largest international airport be without the world’s largest passenger airplane? Here’s one of the massive Airbus A380s, which we found heading out towards the runway. This plane can be configured to hold up to an amazing 853 people, but sources indicate this particular bird has somewhere between 550-650 seats onboard.

2. Beijing Capital International Airport (PEK)

The Asian market is well represented on our countdown in the form of China’s Beijing Capital International Airport, ranking number two in passenger traffic with 31,080,482 flyers in the first 5 months of this year. That’s nearly 5 million more than Heathrow in the same time period! It looks like the day this satellite photo was taken however things are kind of slow, as there isn’t much traffic sitting at the gate.

We did however happen to spot this Boeing 777 mid-takeoff! Or is landing? Hmm…

1. Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL)

Surprised? Well you shouldn’t be! Year after year, the Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International Airport in Atlanta continues to dominate the various statistical categories and easily claim the title of “The World’s Busiest Airport”. It’s had the highest number of annual passengers every year since 1998, the most air traffic in 1999, 2000 and from 2005 through to today, and it even set a world record in 2007 when the airport had a mind boggling 994,346 takeoffs and landings in one year! That’s an average of nearly one takeoff and one landing every minute of every day for a solid year! In an effort to handle this unbelievable amount of traffic, the airport expanded and added a fifth runway in 2006 that literally crosses over Interstate 85 Interstate 285.

ATL has 195 gates spread across six terminals, all accessible by an underground train system. Some of these gates are squeezed extremely tightly together. Delta Airlines (which appropriately happens to be the world’s largest airline) uses Hartsfield–Jackson as its main hub airport, flying over 59% of all flights here. To avoid radio confusion the FAA officially renamed taxiway D (normally pronounced Delta everywhere else) to Taxiway Dixie.

Atlanta had 36,548,629 passengers between January and May of 2011, which is 5.5 million more than Beijing, and they’re still expanding! Google imagery shows us construction of the new terminal F, due to be opened in Spring 2012, and also the airport’s control tower, which happens to be the tallest in the United States as well!

Honourable Mentions

Amongst aviation geeks you will hear the grumblings that an airport isn’t the busiest unless it has the most planes, or the most cargo, or the most international passengers, or whatever! So to be well-rounded in our not so scientific list, here are a few honourable mentions that don’t quite have the passenger counts to make the top 5, but make up for it in other areas.

Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport (DFW) – Ranks number 4 in traffic movement.

Denver International Airport (DEN) – Ranks number 5 in traffic movement.

Hong Kong International Airport (HKG) – Ranks number 1 in cargo traffic.

Memphis International Airport (MEM) – Ranks number 2 in cargo traffic.

Locations: Arkansas, California, China, Colorado, Georgia, Hong Kong, Illinois, Texas, United Kingdom / Categories: Aircraft, Buildings, Structures

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The largest Masonic temple in the world is in Detroit, Michigan. The temple opened in 1926, just a few years before the Great Depression began. Now, the massive auditorium is primarily used as a concert venue called The Masonic.

Modern Freemasonry traces its roots back to the formation of the United Grand Lodge of England in 1717. The U.G.L.E. is headquartered at Freemasons Hall in Great Queen Street, just off Drury Lane, in London.

Across the street from Freemasons Hall, you can see several of the regalia shops that cater to London Masons. These shops sell Masonic books, aprons, keepsakes and trinkets as well as the formal attire required for certain meetings.

In addition to craft lodges (or “blue” lodges), which confer the three degrees of Masonry (Entered Apprentice, Fellowcraft, and Master Mason), there are dozens of Appendant organisations for Masons to join. Two of the most well-known are the Scottish Rite and the Shriners. The U.S. has two governing bodies of the Scottish Rite, but the larger of the two is called the Southern Jurisdiction and its headquarters are in an impressive building in Washington, D.C., called The House of the Temple (Dan Brown fans might recognise it from The Lost Symbol).

Another fascinating (and massive) Scottish Rite Temple is in the unlikely location of Guthrie, Oklahoma. Part of the building once served as the Capitol of the state of Oklahoma.

Guthrie is a fairly small town in Oklahoma and you can see just how large the footprint of the Scottish Rite Temple is—it takes up several blocks of the town.

The Scottish Rite Auditorium in San Antonio, Texas, is one of the largest in the United States, and like Guthrie, it is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Outside the U.S. and England, there are many fascinating Masonic buildings—of course, not all of them on Google Street View. In Toronto, there is a large, ornate building labeled “Masonic Temple” but it’s no longer owned by Masons, in fact, it’s now the headquarters of MTV Canada.

Many of the former British colonies have long histories of Masons establishing lodges in the far reaches of the world. Here’s the Masonic Hall in Hong Kong:

These are just a few of the examples of the literally thousands of Masonic temples around the world. Do send in your favourites!

Locations: District of Columbia, England, Hong Kong, Michigan, Oklahoma, Ontario, Texas / Categories: Buildings, Street Views

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Hong Kong Island

Many people equate Hong Kong with high-end shopping. And if you’re looking to spend money in the shops, it’s likely you’ll end up in Causeway Bay.

In Causeway Bay, you’ll notice the unique trams along Hennessy Road. Hong Kong is the only city in the world with a system that runs exclusively double-decker trams.

As you can see, they also sell full, wrap-around advertising on the trams.

Another unique form of transport are the Central-Mid-Levels escalators, the largest outdoor escalator system in the world. The escalators travel north to south through the hilly, narrow roads and carry over 60,000 pedestrians per day, free of charge.

The exotic foods and street food vendors in Hong Kong are also a major tourist draw. Here are some interesting food stalls along Gage Street.

Finally, along the south end of Hong Kong Island we find another tourist attraction: the Stanley Road market and boardwalk, here’s a view from the boardwalk:

Kowloon Peninsula

Of course there are plenty of attractions and shopping in the other areas of Hong Kong. The neighborhood of Sham Shui Po is famous for its thousands of electronics vendors, especially those along Apliu Street.

Also, if you want to get a bespoke tailored suit while you are in town, the place to go is Chan’s.

The tallest building in Hong Kong is actually on the Kowloon side of the harbour. The International Finance Centre stands 415.8 m high (1,364.2 feet) and was just completed in 2010. By roof height, it is the seventh tallest building in the world. Here you can still see cranes on the top of the building, finishing the top floors.

And here’s a full length shot of it from across the harbour:

Other attractions in Hong Kong include Disneyland and Ocean Park, but the Street View car did not good imagery of either place — maybe the Street View trike will visit them someday!

There are thousands of other streets to explore and islands to visit, but for now, that’s it for our Street View tour of Hong Kong. One downside to experiencing Hong Kong strictly via Google Street View is the eternal sunshine — you never get to see Hong Kong at night.

Locations: Hong Kong / Categories: Buildings, Street Views, Structures, Towers

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There is no sense of cohesion between the islands, and the central business district is hard to identify (compared to say, Paris or even Chicago), and unless you are looking at a topographical map, you can’t see where hills and mountains dictate the landscape.

This is a situation where Street View is invaluable. With just a few minutes of clicking around, you can start to see that the harbour in the middle of Hong Kong is like a playing field. On one side you have the “stands” of Hong Kong Island facing the opposing “stands” of Kowloon. All the other bits and pieces are the New Territories.

Once we drop in to the Hong Kong Island side and pan up, it becomes apparent that, besides skyscrapers, the topography of the island is dominated by Victoria Peak.

Looking across the harbour to Kowloon shows that the skyscrapers there don’t appear to be as impressive as we’d expect from Hong Kong.

Which means that the small strip of urban density along the north side of Hong Kong Island is the central part of the city, and includes the dense urban district just called “Central“.

My first thought is that we need to get up to Victoria Peak and take a look around the whole harbour. It’s rather hard to do that from the Street View car as the vegetation is quite thick, and the most scenic spots are meant to be accessed on foot rather than by car. However, we can sneak some good peeks between the trees.

Here’s the pretty spectacular view looking south, toward the South China Sea.

Victoria Peak is 552 metres high (1811 feet) and accessible via roadway and tramway. Because of the stunning views it offers along the way, the Peak Tram is a major tourist attraction. However, there doesn’t appear to be a great shot of if it in action from the road.

But we can see an old tram car hanging out at the top of the peak near the shopping mall up there (the Peak Galleria).

Before the Peak Tram opened in 1888, wealthy residents would take the only form of public transportation available: sedan chairs carried by coolies.

The highest peak in Hong Kong is not Victoria Peak, though. It’s Tai Mo Shan, just north of Kowloon with an altitude of 957 metres (3140 feet). We can’t get all the way to the top of Tai Mo Shan on Street View, but where the car does get to provides a pretty great view.

We’ve been on the road to the the top of peaks and taken a brief look at the skyline of Hong Kong, but stay tuned for more landmarks when we get down on the streets of Hong Kong and Kowloon in part 2 – coming soon!

Locations: Hong Kong / Categories: Islands, Natural Landmarks, Street Views

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And at Hong Kong International, there’s some sort of fat pink alien spacecraft!

(Or these might be fire training aircraft of course…)

Update: from the comments, here’s a lime-green fatplane, and a white one which has some mysterious Dutch writing next to it…

Thanks to Mako, foo and Marco.

Locations: England, Hong Kong, Netherlands / Categories: Aircraft, Large Type, Structures

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Black Point Power Station also has large type for Oil as well as smaller characters for Water just to the north (which are much clearer if you view the sight in Google Earth).

It’s cool to see some more Hanzi large type, but I wonder why have they done this? In light of Australia’s recent worries about terrorists using Google Earth to target their nuclear power plant why would China be shouting out the location of their highly flammable materials?

Thanks: Jeremy & Billy Leung

Locations: Hong Kong / Categories: Large Type

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There’s a free ferry which takes you out there, and you can see some of them docked by the side of the restaurant itself (see this photo for comparison).

Some people claim that this is the world’s largest floating restaurant, but the Jumbo Kingdom site makes no such claim, which makes me wonder… What is the world’s largest floating restaurant? And (more importantly) is it in hi-res?

Many thanks to Leonard Wan for being the only person to submit this!

Locations: Hong Kong / Categories: Buildings, Watercraft

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According to their website, the Jusco Whampoa Store offers:

one-stop-shopping facilities to customers, including fashion, footwear, handbags, household items, electrical appliances, cosmetics and food.

No boats then? Huh.

Thanks to Fabien Cornu and Kam Tsang.

Locations: Hong Kong / Categories: Buildings, Watercraft

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How cool?

Many thanks to Philip Ng.

Locations: Hong Kong / Categories: Bridges

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As I’ve said before, everything on this site seems to be the tallest/biggest/highest something, and this building proves to be no exception, as it contains the world’s tallest glass wall (which overlooks Victoria Harbour). There’s some fantastic lower-down shots of the building over at their homepage.

Thanks: David, Mike Gavin, Chris Granger, Michelle Cleveland, Nels Nelson, Paul

Locations: Hong Kong / Categories: Buildings

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