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A video available on Vimeo.com shows the visual representation of air traffic over Europe as it is affected by and recovers from flight restrictions imposed in the wake of Iceland’s April volcano eruption. The video covers, in 54 seconds, the six-day span from April 16 to April 21 as the region dealt with a traveling volcanic ash cloud overhead. It does have a few gaps in coverage due to lack of data from France and over the Atlantic. But the imagery creates clear visual contrasts between the virtual shutdown of activity on the 16th and its slow resumption thereafter that, by one analyst’s account, helped cause the disruption of8 percent of global trade. As the region’s activity begins to ramp up to its roughly 25,000 flight per day norm it’s also easy to see the relative inactivity as days turn to night.
Flight data for the video was provided courtesy of flightradar24.com, which shows live aircraft traffic above much of Europe. It was produced by itoworld.com, a firm that provides online presentation, analysis and data management to services in the transport sector, with support from ideasintransit.org. The information is organized over CC-by-SA openstreet.org map data.
View the video at right, or find it here.
