Animations of Air Traffic

August 27, 2003  |  Edward Tufte
15 Comment(s)

Here is a set of animations, of air traffic, wind vectors, sector re-routing done by Dr. Kapil S. Sheth of NASA. This board is hosting these rather large files; a fast connection is required for several files.


First, a description of the 24-hour animation and then links to 7 different animations can be found below:


A Day in the Life of Air Traffic Over the Continental U.S.


FACET Animation created by Dr. Kapil Sheth

for the Aviation Systems Division (AF)

NASA Ames Research Center

Moffett Field, CA



This animation was created using Future ATM Concepts Evaluation Tool (FACET) developed at NASA Ames Research Center. The data for September 6, 2001, was obtained from Volpe Center’s Enhanced Traffic Management System (ETMS). It covers twenty four hours of traffic data, starting at 00:00Z (7:00 pm EDT, September 5, 2001) through 23:59Z (6:59 pm EDT, September 6, 2001), with each frame being, on average, three minutes apart. The display shows Air Route Traffic Control Center (ARTCC) boundaries in white, high altitude Sector boundaries in brown, and US State Boundaries in red. Each aircraft symbol represents an aircraft (not to scale) that filed a flight plan, including General Aviation aircraft. The total number of aircraft in the National Airspce System (NAS) considered by FACET at any instant of time is represented in the middle of status bar (at top).


The animation was created to visualize traffic over the continental U.S. The animation starts off at 00:00Z, which is 7 pm EDT with roughly 4000 aircraft in the system. One sees bands of transatlantic flights traveling from the northeast (Boston, (BOS), New York (JFK), Newark (EWR), La Guardia (LGA), and Philadelphia (PHL)) towards Europe. Several streams of traffic can be seen across the country, some of them between Los Angeles-Houston-Miami (LAX-IAH-MIA), San Francisco-Denver-Chicago-New York (SFO-DEN-ORD-JFK), Los Angeles-San Francisco-Seattle (LAX-SFO-SEA), etc. As time progresses, one can observe a pack of flights taking off from Memphis, Tennessee, and Louisville, Kentucky, around 08:45Z (3:45 am EDT). These are hubs for FedEx and UPS, respectively. The box-haulers are taking off early in the morning for mail deliveries. In the middle of the night around 8:00Z, the traffic drops to as low as 600 aircraft in the whole system.


Somewhere around 12:30Z (7:30 am EDT), there appears a vertical wall along the center of the country, east of which there is a multitude of aircraft, and west of which (4:30 am PDT), the day has not started for passengers. Proceeding from this time, the traffic gradually moves westward and ultimately the number of aircraft peak at about 4800! Roughly between the times of 15:00Z through 20:00Z, the animation displays transatlantic flights returning from Europe to the northeast. Although not as dramatic as the European flights, the planes between Asia and San Francisco can also be seen during 09:00Z to 11:00Z. During the animation, at various times, the hubs and major airports (Los Angeles (LAX), San Francisco (SFO), Seattle (SEA), Denver (DEN), Dallas/Ft. Worth (DFW), Houston (IAH), Minneapolis/St. Paul (MSP), Memphis (MEM), Atlanta (ATL), Chicago (ORD), Boston (BOS), New York (JFK), Washington, D.C. (DCA, IAD, BWI), Miami (MIA), etc.) in the country become clearly highlighted.


The animation depicts how complex the air traffic system and the air traffic management problem are. It also manifests why the northeast corridor is a very difficult situation, not only for the local air traffic controllers but also for the Air Traffic Control System Command Center (ATCSCC) in Herndon, VA.


FACET Movies Description