14 DAY TRIAL // Air traffic controllers have a really hard job to do, as they are responsible for the safety of aircraft at high altitudes. They have to manage and safely guide all the planes that cross Europe's airspace.
The timelapse video included above shows the immense complexity of their day-to-day job and how busy our skies can become.
It tracks all the flights that crossed the sky over the course of 24 hours last summer.
On a typical summer day, around 30,000 flights take place in the European airspace and the total distance flown by these planes is 25 million nautical miles (46 million kilometers).
This amazing illustration was put together by NATS Holdings, the main air navigation service provider in Great Britain (formerly known as National Air Traffic Services). The video was created using real flight data from two sources: UK radar data from June 21 of last year and European flight schedule data from July 28.
If you weren't aware of the great amount of work that goes into managing all these flights and the intensity of the operation, you will surely understand after watching the clip.
“We created this visualisation to highlight the complexity of that work, the skill of our air traffic controllers and the UK’s strategic importance as the aviation gateway to Europe and North America,” Paul Beauchamp, a NATS spokesman, told Daily Mail.