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Planes grounded west coast5/6/2023 ![]() ![]() For an international couple, “home” is a complicated proposition. A year without flying – for many of us – forced major changes in the way we ran our business, family life, leisure time, and how we looked at the world.Ī s I uncertainly considered my flight to Germany, 9,100 miles away, in Perth, Australia, Daria Kuznetsova and Andrew Rodger were making their own calculations. Very soon, flights would be grounded on a scale never before seen. Suddenly, all around the world, people were watching the news, clutching their tickets, checking for updates and wondering what to do. In 2020, passenger numbers were expected to rise yet again – until the Covid-19 pandemic brought the aviation industry to its knees. On an average day, 100,000 flights or more might take off on 25 July 2019 – the busiest recorded day in aviation – there were 230,000. By 2019 that figure had more than doubled, to 4.5 billion. Regular routes – these passageways and corridors and elevated motorways through the sky – have grown more crowded and important as air travel has increased in popularity over recent decades, more tightly stitched into the fabric of our lives and the global economy.īack in 2004, 2 billion passengers boarded flights over the course of a year. ![]() Normally, planes are in constant motion, massing with the daylight but never truly ceasing, moving in predictable patterns like currents over the Earth – the invisible infrastructure of the world. ![]() They were launching over oceans with a cannonball momentum weaving cleanly between each other in a mannered, balletic dance. They crowded the airspace over London and Amsterdam and Paris, converging from all directions before spiralling down. My flight, however, was still scheduled to depart on time.įar above, thousands of planes were still pinballing around Europe, Asia, Africa, the Americas. A hotel regretfully informed me that it would not be able to honour my booking. Another had cancelled our meeting due to childcare problems all schools had suddenly closed. “Don’t come,” one of my German contacts said, simply. Four hours later, I stopped in at my parents’ place near Inverness, where I ate some lunch and checked emails on my phone. ![]()
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