Ukraine Conflict Pushes Services to the Limit As Onlookers Monitor Flights in Region

Amid the interesting goings-on in Ukraine, aviation nerds have pummeled the service of flight tracking website Flightradar24.

After continuously monitoring every last scrap of minutiae over Ukrainian airspace, generating almost 20 times the level of average daily traffic, the site's service gave out. 

In another vignette of war in the modern world, a series of surveillance systems and traffic control gave onlookers a highly granular, surprisingly accurate view of the hostilities from moment to moment. Viewers saw civilian airliners originally heading to Kyiv pull a surprise J-turn and head to nearby Poland, saw American UAVs circle points of interest, and even watched an intrepid Air India flight continue into to eastern Ukraine after all others had shied away. The riveting events were described as "extremely heavy traffic loads' ' that stretched Flightradar24 to the max. 

Airspace in Ukraine was quickly closed due to military action, and is now listed as an active conflict zone in the EASA's informational bulletin. Additional tracking is still ongoing, though without the worry of civilian aircraft in the region, it is suspected that operating combat aircraft won't be playing by the rules and carefully reporting their location in the ADSB system. 

FMI: www.flightradar24.com