Flight Patterns

Flight Patterns is a time-lapse animation that employs data visualization and processing, an open-source computer programming environment, in order to display American air-traffic patterns and densities over a twenty-four-hour period. Begun as a larger project at UCLA with designers Scott Hessels and Gabriel Dunne, Aaron Koblin’s animations follow the routes of 140,000 airplanes crossing the United States beginning at 5:00 p.m. Eastern time. Koblin uses variations of color and pattern to illustrate a wide range of data and events, including aircraft type, alterations to routes, changes in flight traffic over certain geographical areas, weather systems, and no-fly zones. As the animation reveals multiple iterations of flight patterns during the cycle, the viewer experiences a changing, phantom geography of the country with airline hubs appearing as bright points of diffusion within a complex web.