Plane carrying Queen's coffin becomes most tracked flight in history
The plane that carried the Queen’s coffin has broken records for the most tracked flight in history.
According to tracking website Flightradar24, within the first minute the Royal Air Force (RAF) plane was in the air on Tuesday, “an unprecedented six million people attempted to follow the flight.”
The crazy amount of people trying to track the flight caused site disruptions, so Flightradar24 says it started limiting the number of users added.
Over the course of the plane’s journey from Edinburgh to RAF Northolt, 4.79 million people followed a portion of the flight, and Flightradar24 processed 76.2 million requests related to the flight.
“70 years after her first flight as Queen aboard the BOAC Argonaut ‘Atalanta,’ Queen Elizabeth IIās final flight is the most tracked flight in Flightradar24 history,” tweeted the site on September 13.
70 years after her first flight as Queen aboard the BOAC Argonaut āAtalanta,ā Queen Elizabeth IIās final flight is the most tracked flight in Flightradar24 history.
ā Flightradar24 (@flightradar24) September 13, 2022
This breaks the previous record set last month by a plane flying US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Taipei, Taiwan. That flight was tracked by about 2.2 million people.
Overall, five million people tuned in to the Queen’s final flight across Flightradar24’s site, mobile app, and YouTube livestream, cementing it as the most tracked flight of all time.
The site says it’ll likely remain number one for a while.
The RAF Globemaster C-17 plane spent an hour and 12 minutes flying, landing in RAF Northolt, a military station north of Heathrow Airport in London.
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Since the Queen’s coffin landed in London, it was sent to Buckingham Palace and then escorted to the Palace of Westminster.
There, the Queen will lie in state until her funeral on Monday, September 19, which will take place at Westminster Abbey.
Canada has declared the day of the funeral a federal holiday. However, provinces like BC, Quebec, and Ontario do not get a day off.