Aircraft aware

July 18, 2014

The tragic shooting down of a Malaysian Airlines jet over Ukraine brought the world’s attention to the safety of the airspace above that country. Flightradar24.com has a website which shows the real time commercial air traffic around the world. The area ‘north of 56’ is a major thoroughfare for air traffic from the eastern seaboard to Asia.

Looking at the northern third of North America at one moment in time (10AM PST 18-Jul-2014) a few observations:

• There were 55 commercial aircraft of all sizes in the air over Alaska, reflecting in part the fact that Anchorage is a busy hub for commercial aircraft.
• There were only two flights over Yukon, both international transiting the territory which is the size of California.
• There were 5 flights over NWT. There are about 150 forest fires burning at this time.
• There were 14 flights over Nunavut ( and Hudson’s Bay which is part of Nunavut).
• No flights over Greenland. Strange its the largest island in the world.
• 6 flights over northernmost Quebec (Nunavik)
• One flight over northernmost Manitoba.
• Two flights over northernmost Saskatchewan, one has a question mark on it.
• Six flights in Alberta north of Ft.McMurray.
• Four flights in northernmost BC.

Ted Stevens International Airport (Anchorage) has about 2.3 million commercial passenger boardings per year, Fairbanks about 435,000 and Juneau 345,000. Whitehorse airport handled 294,000 passengers in 2012. Yellowknife airport handled 527,000 passengers in 2007.

Iqaluit handled 120,000 passengers in 2011. Its airport is being rebuilt.

Commentary

On average Alaska has most of the air traffic over its land base, as borne out by this little exercise. This makes sense in that more than 1/2 of the population ‘north of 56’ resides in Alaska.

Sources

• a)http://www.flightradar24.com/64.71,-131.22/4



• b)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airports_in_Alaska and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erik_Nielsen_Whitehorse_International_Airport