Was this the busiest day in aviation history? Flight tracking app registers over 225,000 aircraft in the skies on Wednesday
- Flightradar24 said it was the most flights it had ever recorded in a single day
- Figure includes commercial flights, cargo planes, helicopters and private jets
- A map shows the majority of flights clustered around the US and Europe
Wednesday may have been one of the busiest days in aviation history.
Flight tracking app Flightradar24 said it registered over 225,000 aircraft in the skies on that day – the most it had ever recorded in a single day.
The figure is made up of every flight the app managed to trace and includes commercial flights, cargo planes, helicopters, gliders and private jets.
To illustrate just how busy the skies were on Wednesday, Flightradar24 released a snapshot of its world map graphic, which was swarming with plane icons
However, Flightradar24 has only been tracking flights since 2006 and isn’t the official supplier of air traffic data, so whether Wednesday was a record-breaker is open to debate.
To illustrate just how busy the skies were on Wednesday, Flightradar24 released a snapshot of its world map graphic, which was swarming with plane icons.
The majority of the flights were clustered over the United States, Europe and south-east Asia.
But not everyone on Twitter was impressed by the stat, with some voicing concerns for the environment.
Sabine Meijerink wrote: ‘Nothing to be proud of. In fact… we should be ashamed of ourselves for achieving those numbers.’
Some on Twitter voiced concerns for the environment
Serafin tweeted: ‘Too bad for the environment.’
While Gert Dijkhuizen added: ‘Utterly unsustainable, complete madness, unbelievable destruction of our children’s future.’
However, Bruce tweeted: ‘Incredible! I hope more and more flights happen in the future, everyone deserves to fly.’
Last week, Nats, the UK’s provider of air traffic control services, said it expected the summer of 2019 to be the busiest on record for air traffic in Europe (file picture)
Last week, Nats, the UK’s provider of air traffic control services, said it expected the summer of 2019 to be the busiest on record for air traffic in Europe.
It has already seen records broken for most UK flights ever in a single day, July 5, when 8,863 flights were handled by Nats in 24 hours.
On peak days, Nats added that it could handle well over 8,000 flights per day.