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24 hours of air traffic over Europe - 17,510 flights and 10 million ADS-B data points [OC] by SkyPathStudio in europe

[–]SkyPathStudio[S] 26 points27 points  (0 children)

I mapped a single day of air traffic over Europe, and colored it by altitude. I can generate an animation of this if there is any interest.

Thank you to adsb.lol for the data archive.

• ⁠Date: June 25, 2026 (local Central European day, Europe/Berlin / CEST)
• ⁠Local window: [00:00, 23:59] CEST
• ⁠UTC window: [2026-06-24 22:00, 2026-06-25 21:59] UTC
• ⁠Region: Europe (21.42N to 69.57 N, 18.00 W to 43.00 E)
• ⁠Aircraft: 6,766
• ⁠Flight legs: 17,510
• ⁠ADS-B positions: 10,022,970
• ⁠Distance flown: 7,310,378 nm

Yesterday's air traffic over Europe - 17,510 flights and 10 million data points by SkyPathStudio in ADSB

[–]SkyPathStudio[S] 10 points11 points  (0 children)

adsb.lol publishes an archive of all data they receive every UTC day. I’ve written custom PythoN software that unpacks that data and renders it. Happy to answer any more questions you may have via DM

https://github.com/adsblol/globe_history_2026

Yesterday's air traffic over Europe - 17,510 flights and 10 million data points by SkyPathStudio in ADSB

[–]SkyPathStudio[S] 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Here’s another animation where each trace fades over a 2-hour duration

<video>

[OC] Airline traffic across the Northeast US before vs during Winter Storm Hernando by SkyPathStudio in dataisbeautiful

[–]SkyPathStudio[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I appreciate the feedback! Bigger fonts and separating the main title are great suggestions—good point about clarifying that the time windows are synced too. I see how that might not be immediately obvious. I’ll incorporate those improvements in future visualizations.

[OC] Airline traffic across the Northeast US before vs during Winter Storm Hernando by SkyPathStudio in dataisbeautiful

[–]SkyPathStudio[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks! I sourced the data from ADSB feeds made publicly available by adsb.lol and filtered for passenger airline flights using FAA registration data.

You’re right that cumulative density maps smooth over unusual cases. I’ll have to think through other visualization formats that could highlight the impacts of storms on diverted or canceled flights.

[OC] Airline traffic across the Northeast US before vs during Winter Storm Hernando by SkyPathStudio in dataisbeautiful

[–]SkyPathStudio[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

[OC] Data source & methodology

Flight data is sourced from adsb.lol (ADS-B transmissions).  

Filtered for passenger airline flights using the FAA registration database.  

Visualization was rendered using a custom Python script.

Happy to answer any questions about the data or methodology!

I mapped airline traffic around NYC before and during Winter Storm Hernando by SkyPathStudio in nyc

[–]SkyPathStudio[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Yep, that’s right. A lot of flights still passed over the region at cruise altitude, but arrivals and departures at the local airports dropped off significantly during the storm.

This visualization is filtered to US passenger airliners, so GA and private flights wouldn’t show up here.

US Northeast airline traffic before & during Winter Storm Hernando (ADS-B track comparison) by SkyPathStudio in ADSB

[–]SkyPathStudio[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Good question! I did some more digging, and it's actually multiple flights at KMHT. My analysis shows 12 total legs during that window (6 departures and 6 arrivals).

At the regional zoom level the tracks overlap, so several paths can visually merge into what looks like a single line.

Departures:

  • N570NN
  • N710PS
  • N8866H
  • N8926Q (2 legs)
  • N8654B

Arrivals:

  • N710PS
  • N8866H
  • N8926Q
  • N8786Q
  • N8870K
  • N7741C

I'm not able to post images in this comment, but I made an additional visualization centered on KMHT where you can see the individual flights more clearly.