Flights... Flying No Longer

I have some weird interests that I pursue. One of them to sit and watch flights across the planet on flightradar.

On a normal day, there are more 102,000 flights that take off around the world. That number has come down significantly and in the west, all the airlines have done to their governments; bowl in hand. They did the same after 9/11. I believe they should not be spared a dime. They spent all of their cash on share buybacks last year. They don't deserve the bailout but that is for another post.

While pursuing my strange hobby, this is what I found.

India has zero flights flying right now. They could as well just shut the airports and save on electricity. All the planes in the image are overflights from south-east Asia to the middle east or Europe.

Continuing from there. The Middle East route, especially over Iran, is usually heavily used by flight flying from Europe to India/South East Asia. almost no traffic in that sector.

I have never in my life seen the Atlantic corridor this empty. There are almost no flights there and the blue ones are cargo planes. Normally, you would not see a single patch of blue.

And then America. Now we all know why America is the global leader in CoronaVirus cases across the world.

I normally follow air traffic to see trends in activity around various cities. Air traffic is seen as an indication of the prosperity and inter-connectedness of a city. Usually, air traffic increases before the wealth increases in any place.

This is unprecedented and unlike anything that I have ever seen. Today, the case counts of COVID-19 in various countries reflect the air traffic in those countries. You can compare the flights with this dashboard. It shows!