The UK air traffic control firm (NATS) have crunched their data on transatlantic flights to produce a stunning visualisation of the “North Atlantic Skies”. The animation covers a typical summer’s day in 2013.

Some statistics from NATS blog post:

• On a typical July day there are around 30,000 flights across European airspace
• Approximately a quarter fly within UK controlled airspace
• The total distance flown by these aircraft is 25 million nautical miles. That’s 998 times around the Earth, or 104 trips to the Moon
• On 21 June, 5,675 aircraft departed or arrived from UK airports, of which 2,295 departed from or arrived at Gatwick (894) or Heathrow (1,401)
• 1,532 were overflights
• The video is 1440x faster than real time

(h/t boingboing)