Skift Take

It's hard to consider how busy the airborne highway is when on the ground or in a plane. Perhaps it's something the U.S. government should watch next time they consider furloughing air traffic controllers.

NATS provides air traffic control services for the UK, namely Gatwick and Heathrow airport. It’s also created the one of the coolest travel videos of 2014 with this neat data visualization of air traffic across Europe.

The video was created using real flight data — a combination of UK radar data from 21 June and European flight plan information from 28 July — to represent a typical summer day.

The video is sped up to about 1440 times faster than real time in order to show an average 300,000 flights across Europe in under two minutes.

This video kickstarted a series that NATS has rolled out on Vimeo over the past month. The videos highlight the air traffic controllers’ role in operating safe and efficient flights and consider the future of aviation.

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Tags: eu, videos

Photo credit: A data visualization of air traffic in Europe created from real flight data. NATS / Vimeo

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