Sean Rocha

Every flight in 24 hours

Over at the Washington Post, there’s a lot that intrigues on Max Fisher’s list of 40 maps that explain the world but I travel so much that I was drawn to this video simulation of every flight in the world in 24 hours.  Like a lot of maps, it reveals more than just its ostensible subject; in this case, it gives a good sense of population densities and wealth distribution.  It also hints at historical connections — between Europe and its former colonies, say — and public policy choices.  The US, for example, is an almost unbroken block of flights all day: makes sense in a vast country, but with different infrastructure much of that medium-distance travel would be by high-speed train, as in France or Japan.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 14th, 2014 at 11:53 am. It is filed under That is Genius and tagged with travel, video. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.