World's Air Traffic over 24 hours

[athaker]

In one minute:

[joeyb747]

Pretty neat! 

[Dngnkeeper]

Now thats fun.

[Squawk 7700]

reminds me of bacteria.

[jsapyta]

that is pretty neat.. there's one lone aircraft from the southern tip of South america to Africa.

[squeegeeboy]

Very cool. It's neat to watch how the volume of traffic corresponds with where the sun is shining.

[phil-s]

New to me were

1) The huge holes with no traffic - SE Pacific north of the occasional Chile to NZ/Australia flight, S Atlantic N of the occasional Bueno Aires/JBerg flight and something that looks like BA?Lagos, and 3) the central Indian Ocean.

2) How far south the Chile/NZ flights go. The low pressure systems there can dwarf anything in the N Atlantic or N Pacific.

3) The distortion caused by the Mercator projection. The flights near the N pole speed along like they're on crystal meth.

It must be lonely and maybe even a bit scary for the flight crews on those way south routes. Or is it pure pleasure not have to worry about traffic separation?

[Hollis]

About the longest scheduled flight is China Eastern CES588, an Airbus 340-600, from KJFK to ZSPD (Shangai). In fact one is now in flight somewhere over Northern Canada enroute via the Artic Circle Route. Departs daily from KJFK at 1AM EST.  Time enroute? 17 Hrs.!
Scary or just plain boring?
 

[phil-s]

I htink the Arctic Circle routes are beautiful. Glaciers, wild coastlines, mountains, ice pack, and most of all the aurora! And there's at least some traffic and even radar coverage over parts of it. The Southern Ocean routes, OTOH, are water all the way. Auckland/Santiago - 11.5 hours, over water. One flight a day. Ok, narita/LA is all water also.  Anyway, the video is fascinating!

[mhawke]

About the longest scheduled flight is China Eastern CES588, an Airbus 340-600, from KJFK to ZSPD (Shangai). 

I think there is one longer.  I have taken the Newark to Singapore flight on Singapore Airlines before.  It's an all business class A340.  The flight when I took it was scheduled at 18 hours and actually ended up being just over 19 hours because we had 2 go arounds on landing at Changi from wind shear warnings.

[jonnevin]

aren't the big voids in air traffic actually areas without radar service?

[sykocus]

aren't the big voids in air traffic actually areas without radar service?

The majority of this data probably came from the FAA's ETMS which tracks all flights within the US as well as within many other countries' airspace that participate. It can take a plane's filed speed, flight plan and actual position reports and estimate where they are. Also many aircraft have ADS which automatically sends regular position reports via satellite and also allows a controller to "ping" an aircraft and it will respond with it's position on demand. The ETMS takes this plus actual radar data and can give a fairly good picture of many aircraft throughout the world even in area's w/o radar coverage.