Memorial Day Weekend Helicopter Flights

The Gothamist has mapped out helicopter flights over New York City during the Memorial Day Weekend. The map accompanies a story on the rise in residents' complaints about helicopter noise in the city and the news that the City Council is introducing two bills aimed at reducing helicopter traffic.

The interactive map in NYC Council bills aim to soar above helicopter noise complaints uses data from flightradar24 to visualize the flight paths of helicopters over the city and their destination airports. The map is a very effective visualization of the huge number of helicopters flying over NYC, "nearly 2,000 helicopter flights recorded from the Thursday-through-Tuesday holiday weekend."

The map also illustrates the most common flight paths taken by helicopters in the city. In the screenshot of the map above you can see that helicopters in NYC tend to follow the Hudson, the East River and both the north & south shorelines of Long Island. This is a pattern which can also be observed using the ADS-B Massive Visualizer.

The ADS-B Massive Visualizer allows you to query and visualize the world's air traffic data. Using the visualizer you can query 50 billion flight data records. This allows you to map the flight paths of different types of aircraft anywhere in the world - for example the routes taken by helicopters in New York. 

On this map you can again see how helicopters in New York avoid the city's massive skyscrapers by following the Hudson and East River. These routes may also be popular as the rivers and shorelines can be used to help pilots navigate the city.

A similar pattern can be seen in the flight paths taken by helicopters in London. This query of helicopter flights over London shows that many helicopter pilots like to follow the river Thames, as far as the Isle of Dogs in the East End where they turn northwards and then follow the River Lea up through the Olympic Park (or vice versa if traveling in the opposite direction). Again these routes may be popular with pilots as they avoid tall buildings and are easy to navigate.

Helicopter flights over central Paris are heavily regulated. Because of this there is no flight traffic along the Seine in central Paris. Instead helicopters appear to follow the Peripherique in south and east Paris, the path of the Seine in the west and the Autoroute du Nord in the north of the city.