After the start of the Russian military operation, Ukraine has closed its airspace and what thousands of people on the Internet have done is run to the FlightRadar website to watch the event in real time. There is so much demand to enter, that have implemented a queue system.
FlightRadar24 is a website famous for offering a global real-time flight tracking service. Basically, entering there you can see the air traffic from around the world live in a graphical representation on Google maps.
Waiting for more than 20 minutes to access FlightRadar
The site is experiencing so much traffic right now that they have had to implement a virtual queue to limit the number of users who can access the web at the same time. The waits at the moment are not too long, just over 20 minutes, but this can vary.
The State Company of Air Traffic Services of Ukraine reported today in a statement that “Due to the high risk of aviation safety for civil aeronautics, the closure of Ukraine’s airspace for civil flights is decreed.”
It is an effect that is immediately noticeable when opening FlightRadar itself, you will find a “hole” over Ukraine on the aerial map, as you can see in the image that heads this article.
It is likely that the queues to access the web will begin to lengthen even more as the day goes by. The estimate gets to be hung in 1 minute and does not allow access even if you have more than double the estimated waiting time in queue.