Before and after: the way the skies are changing amid the coronavirus pandemic
24 March, 2020
The skies look vastly different now than they did only per month ago.
As the quantity of commercial flights dwindle around the world with many airports closed and just a few routes in operation, vapour trails are disappearing from the sky. In fact, if you were to look at a graphic of flights around the world from February 23, and one from today, March 23, you would visit a strikingly different picture.
Two images from flight tracking website FlightRadar24 show how air traffic has changed in mere a few short weeks.
On February 23, you would visit a world map on FlightRadar24 almost completely blanketed by planes. The entire USA outline is obscured, as is that of entire Europe and the majority of Asia. Today, there is still a lot of air traffic over the united states and Asia, but it is drastically decreased.
In the coming days, this picture can look hugely different still.
On March 21, FlightRadar24 reported its lowest level of tracked flights since January 1, 2017 - excluding Christmas.
Emirates flights are still in the air, for the present time
This is a similar story for the aviation sector in the UAE.
Emirates announced on Sunday it could be grounding its entire fleet, a decision that was almost immediately reversed, as the airline said it could still operate some flights to select locations.
However, on Monday, the Civil Aviation Authority announced that passenger flights in and from the UAE would be suspended from Wednesday, March 25, for a two-week period.
The momentary suspension will primarily affect Dubai airport - the world’s busiest hub by international passenger numbers. The airport is also the house base for Emirates.
By Sunday night, there were still several dozen Emirates flights in the skies or at various destinations around the world, based on the FlightRadar24 tracking systems. Most were found in the center East, primarily in the UAE, or Europe.
So perhaps this could be the last image we see, until following the grounding of Emirates commercial flights in transit.
Source: www.thenational.ae
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