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The Guardian - AU
The Guardian - AU
World
Callum Jones in Sydney

How Flightradar24 became the go-to platform for the world to watch global aviation crises unfold

Empty airspace over the Middle East due to the US-Israel war on Iran, as seen on Flightradar24
Flightradar24 shows empty airspace over the Middle East due to the US-Israel war on Iran. Illustration: Flightradar24

Mikael Robertsson and Olov Lindberg did not set out to build one of the pre-eminent monitors of global airspace. In a bid to draw more eyes to their Swedish flight price comparison portal, the entrepreneurs added a page charting air traffic.

That page became Flightradar24, the portal that people around the world now turn to when there is chaos – and drama – in the skies.

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