Although an extremely diverse flight network exists globally let’s focus specifically on the transatlantic corridor. Daily, there are two periods of a massive migration of flights: from Europe to North America, and the return to Europe. These flight patterns, although charted and scheduled by man, exist in response to a verity of economic, logistical and Cartesian conditions. Strong economies in both North America and Europe created a market demand for business travel between the two continents. The location of the airport cities facilitates hub to hub travel with local distribution, and travel times are chosen to best accommodate passengers travel schedules and Cartesian rhythms. The flights that depart North America in the evening fly overnight and arrive in Europe in the morning. Arriving in major European hub cities like London, Amsterdam or Paris connections are made from the major transatlantic craft to regional flights to Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and smaller Western European cities. The inter-continentals need to arrive before the departing regional flights, allowing enough time for transfer. Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport is dependent for facilitate such transfers handling 51 million passengers annually, more than three times the country’s population. The hub airports also create spectacularly unique opportunities for interaction, as two people , one from Chicago, the other Montreal, can for a moment cross paths, have a conversation before they carry on to their separate destinations never to see each-other again. Because of the flight times being around nine hours, airlines are able to pull of the round trip route on a 24 hour cycle. Theoretically, this means an Air France flight; from Paris to New York can depart Paris at 4am and make it back by 1am for the next day’s flight. However, none of these flights like this exist, as it would place then outside the network. Passengers would have severe problems with jetlag and flight times, leaving them unable to make any connecting flights until the next day. Such a move would increase valuable travel time and costs for passengers. However, cargo airline can operate on such schedules, operating on their own networks and taking advantage of times of lower traffic, they are able to move freight at night for the next day’s distribution.
http://flightaware.com/analysis/allflights_movie.rvt
