Flight Patterns Show Earth's Geographic Features

Flight traffic in North America has become so dense that the continent’s geographic outline can be seen by just plotting the flight patterns. Aaron Koblin posted an animation on Yahoo! Video using data from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (to the left). The video shows the sky’s density when plotting each flight. According to U.S. Department of Transportation’s air traffic statistics, over 62 million passengers were on a scheduled U.S. domestic flight in August 2007. The skies are bound to get too crowded sometime in the future, resulting in increased delays. Some airspace in the United States, such as in the Philadelphia – New Jersey – New York area, have already become congested enough that the FAA is redesigning the airport approaches to allow a higher volume of flight traffic and to reduce delays. In the future, larger planes may be needed to accommodate the growing number of air travelers.