Airline maps are geographically accurate because air travel is deeply disempowering. They have been less and less abstract since the '70s because the deregulation of the airline industry has had the effect of making airline travelers less and less like luxury adventurers and more and more like breathing cargo.

"You are here" is a valuable thing to know when you're disoriented, when you're feeling oppressed, when you have no handle on the situation and no power over anyone. We now live in a society where a stewardess can have air marshals arrest you for giving them lip - air travel is plenty Kafka-esque without turning the only orienting document available into a circuit diagram.

Beautiful work, though. It absolutely belongs in advertising, where your audience is safely oriented in their own locale surrounded by possessions they have in their control. Turning the world into a system ready for the client to utilize is exactly the mental space you want to put them in. Then once they get in the plane, give them a moving map display.

"Folks, if you look to your left you'll see Mt. Hood" does not happen because the flight crew is bored. It happens because a disturbing percentage of passengers are looking for an indicator they aren't on the wrong plane.