Apple Maps sends cars onto runway
An Alaskan airport has closed an aircraft access route because of a flaw with Apple’s Maps app.
Fairbanks International Airport told a local newspaper that in the past three weeks two motorists had driven along the taxiway and across one of its runways.
Apple’s app had directed users along the taxiway but did not specifically tell them to drive onto the runway.
The firm has now issued a temporary fix, the BBC reports.
Users searching for directions to the airport parking lot are told they are “not available”.
Melissa Osborn, chief of operations at the airport, said that barricades had since been erected to block access to the final stretch of the taxiway and that they would not be removed until Apple had updated its directions.
Fairbanks Airport said the drivers involved in the incidents had both been from out of town and had ignored signposts warning them that they should not be driving along the taxiway.
Barricades now prevent drivers following Apple’s directions
“They must have been persistent,” the airport’s assistant manager Angie Spear told the BBC.
“They had to enter the airport property via a motion-activated gate, and afterwards there are many signs, lights and painted markings, first warning that aircraft may share the road and then that drivers should not be there at all.
“They needed to drive over a mile with all this before reaching the runway. But the drivers disregarded all that because they were following the directions given on their iPhones.”
Ian Jarrett
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