Irish government joins Apple Maps haters brigade

Oh man, the guys at Google will be hosing themselves when they see this one. The Irish government has sent a request to the Cupertino-based giant asking it to reclassify an area labelled as a dedicated airport.

While the area in question is called Airfield Park, there’s no airport at the site. In fact, a plane might have a difficult time landing among the farm, gardens and cafe that inhabit the location.

According to Irish news site Breakingnews, Minister for Justice Alan Shatter contacted Apple with his concerns over the classification.

The designation, he says, could be dangerously misleading and potentially lead to a pilot unfamiliar with the area landing there in an emergency. Presumably they would have time to check their iDevice in such an emergency.

Shatter believes an alternate symbol should be found for the area.

“In context of Airfield there are a variety of possible alternative images that could be utilised such as a cow, a goat, a sheep, a flower or any indeed other type of plant, as Airfield operates a nursery,” he said. ”An aircraft is an entirely inappropriate flight of imagination.”

As The Next Web reports, Dublin Airport quickly cottoned on to the situation, sending out this tweet:

Just in case anybody is confused @dublinairport is not moving to the southside. #mapfail ow.ly/dQWq1

— Dublin Airport (@DublinAirport) September 20, 2012

It’s certainly not the first, or last, complaint you’ll hear against Apple’s Map product, but it is probably the most entertaining.