What Is an Air Mile?
Many of our clients ask for “Air Miles Maps” because they found us through a search on keywords like “Radius maps” or “Circle maps”. But normally only the folks working on FMCSA compliance issues really want “Air Miles”. There are a lot of definitions for “mile” as you can see in the extract from Wikipedia. read the full article there if you really want to know your miles from a hole in the ground 
Types of mile
In modern usage, various distances are referred to as miles.
International and statute miles
The international mile (and before 1959, the statute mile) is the distance typically meant when the word mile is used without other qualifying words (e.g. nautical mile, see below). The international and statute miles are both equal to 5,280 feet, but the international mile is defined in terms of the international foot (0.3048 m), while the statute miles of the various English-speaking countries were based on the national foot of each country. The (mostly obsolete) U.S. statute mile is based on the U.S. survey foot (which is exactly 1200/3937 m) and differs from the international mile by about 3 mm. [8]
The name statute mile originates from a statute of the Parliament of England in 1592 during the reign of Elizabeth I. This defined the statute mile as 5,280 ft or 1,760 yards; or 63,360 inches. Both statute and international miles are divided into eight furlongs (the length generally that a furrow was ploughed before the horses were turned, furlong = furrow-long). In turn a furlong is ten chains (a surveyor’s chain, used as such until laser range finders took over); a chain is 22 yards and a yard is three feet, making up 5,280 ft.
Other miles in Britain and Ireland
Before the statute of the English parliament, there was confusion on the length of the "mile". The Irish mile was 6,721 feet and the Scottish mile was 5,951 feet.[9] Perhaps the earliest tables of English linear measures, Arnold’s Customs of London (c. 1500) indicates a mile consisted of 8 furlongs, each of 625 feet, for a total of 5,000 feet.[10] For other "miles" see the list below.
Nautical miles
On the utility of the nautical mile
Each circle shown is a great circle – the analog of a line in spherical trigonometry – and hence the shortest path connecting two points on the globular surface. Meridians are great circles that pass through the poles.
Main article: Nautical mile
The nautical mile was originally defined as one minute of arc along a meridian of the Earth.[11] It is a convenient reference since it is fairly constant at all latitudes, in contrast with degrees of longitude which vary from from 1 NM at the equator to zero at the poles.
Navigators use dividers to step off the distance between two points on the navigational chart, then place the open dividers against the minutes-of-latitude scale at the edge of the chart, and read off the distance in nautical miles.[12] Since it is now known that the Earth is not perfectly spherical but an oblate spheroid, the length derived from this method varies slightly from the equator to the poles. For instance, using the WGS84 Ellipsoid, the commonly accepted Earth model for many purposes today, one minute of latitude at the WGS84 equator is 6,087 feet and at the poles is 6,067 feet. On average it is about 6,076 feet (about 1852 meters or 1.15 statute miles).
In the United States of America, the nautical mile was defined in the nineteenth century as 6,080.2 feet (1,853.249 m), whereas in the United Kingdom the Admiralty nautical mile was defined as 6,080 feet (1,853.184 m) and was approximately one minute of latitude in the latitudes of the south of the UK. Other nations had different definitions of the nautical mile, but it is now internationally defined to be exactly 1,852 meters.
The nautical mile per hour is known as the knot. Nautical miles and knots are almost universally used for aeronautical and maritime navigation because of their relationship with degrees and minutes of latitude and the convenience of using the latitude scale on a map for distance measuring…
So we’ll be happy to make you a map in almost any unit you wish (see our Air Miles map order page here). but if you ask for Air Miles, be sure that’s what you really want … or your map will be “correct” but in “error” at the same time.
State spends millions on rents for paroled sex offenders, sometimes illegally
These guys should have just ordered a radius map from Air Miles map to find out how far these places were from schools and parks before they spent state money illegally.
By John Simerman
Contra Costa TimesPosted: 01/17/2009 04:35:06 PM PST
State corrections officials spent nearly $22 million last year on apartments and motel rooms for hundreds of paroled sex offenders, paying more than $2,000 a month for some parolees and housing others in locations apparently prohibited under Jessica’s Law, according to a MediaNews analysis of bank drafts issued by parole agents and addresses from the Megan’s Law sex offender database.
The housing assistance, which has run for more than two years for some parolees, highlights a dilemma state officials face trying to enforce a voter-approved ban on sex offenders living within 2,000 feet of a school or a park where kids "regularly gather." They must either find scarce housing and pay to put them up, or deal with a steeper rise in sex offenders who become homeless and lose the stability that experts call crucial to preventing recidivism.
A top state corrections official acknowledged that parole agents have sometimes spent state funds to house sex offenders in areas that officials later learned were illegal. He was unaware of some local examples MediaNews found using state data and a GPS handset:
In El Cerrito, a parole office has spent as much as $300 a week for sex offenders to live at the Budget Inn on San Pablo Avenue. The motel is within 700 feet of Mendocino Park, a neighborhood playground where small children swing, scramble through play structures and ride tricycles. A corrections spokesman said parole officials realized a few months ago that the motel violated Jessica’s Law and now they only pay for sex offenders to live there who are not subject to the 2,000 law…
We can make maps of almost any radius for most any location in the US or Canada. If one of our standard offerings from our “Order a Map” page isn’t what you need, just send us a note via our “Contact” page or call us at 719-966-4295 and we’ll work with you on your special needs for Radius maps, in air miles, statute miles, meters, yards, feet, you name it we’ll map it.
Some More Clarification on Air Miles maps
We get a lot of questions here at Air Miles Maps Online regarding the finer points of the Federal Motor carrier Safety Administration rules for so-called “short haul” or “local” log book (RODS) exemptions. It’s always best to go to the source:
http://www.fmcsa.dot.gov/rules-regulations/truck/driver/hos/hos-faqs.asp
C-2 What is an "air mile"?
The term "air-mile" is internationally defined as a "nautical mile" which is
equivalent to 6,076 feet. Thus, the 100 air-miles are equivalent to 115.08
statute miles, and 150 air-miles are equivalent to 172.6 statute miles.
Most operators and drivers reading here are OTR drivers and do not operate under the 100 air
mile log book exemption. But for some, this can be a very important exemption for improving your bottom line by eliminating a lot of paperwork requirements.
Remember, this air mile log book exemption doesn’t measure how many miles it takes to drive from A to B, it only measures the straight-line distance, or as the crow flies", from A to B.
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There are many drivers that think once you cross a state’s border, that is to say become interstate, you cannot use the 100 air mile exemption. That’s not true, that rule went away quite a few years ago. Here are the requirements for using the 100 air mile log book exemption:
100 air-mile radius exemption:
A driver is exempt from maintaining the driver’s daily log requirements of Section 395.8 if all of the following are true:
a.. The driver operates within a 100 air-mile radius of the normal work reporting location.
b.. The driver returns to the work reporting location and is released from work within 12 consecutive hours.
c.. Each 12 hours on duty are separated by at least:
a.. 10 consecutive hours off duty for property-carrying drivers, or
b.. 8 consecutive hours off duty for passenger-carrying drivers.
d.. The driver does not exceed a maximum of:
a.. 11 hours driving time following 10 consecutive hours off duty for property-carrying drivers, or
b.. 10 hours driving time following 8 consecutive hours off duty for passenger-carrying drivers.
e.. The motor carrier that employs the driver maintains and retains for a period of six months accurate and true time records that show:
a.. The time the driver reports for duty each day;
b.. The total number of hours the driver is on duty each day;
c.. The time the driver is released from duty each day; and
d.. The total time for the preceding 7 days for first-time or intermittent drivers.
This really seems pretty important to me, now that we are heading into the last quarter of the year and a (hopefully) very busy holiday season … this will help get those store deliveries out there in the shortest time and the lowest possible cost via the use of an Air Miles Map.