The plane carrying Queen Elizabeth II’s coffin has set a new all-time high flight tracking record.
According to aviation tracker website Flightradar24, nearly five million people tracked the plane online as the deceased Queen was flown from Edinburgh to London.
4.79 million people followed the flight on Flightradar24’s website and mobile app, and an additional 296,000 tracked the plane on YouTube, CNN reported.
US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s controversial visit to Taiwan last month held the previous record, which about 2.9 million people tracked.
The Royal Air Force plane carrying the Queen was in flight for one hour and 12 minutes before it landed at RAF Northolt, a military station about six miles from Heathrow Airport in Greater London.
From there, the Queen’s coffin was taken to Buckingham Palace. On Wednesday, the casket was escorted to Westminster Hall, Parliament, where the Queen will lie until her funeral on Monday, September 19, in Westminster Abbey.
Flightradar24 staffers knew the Queen’s final flight would likely become tremendously popular. The team tried to provide as much website stability as possible; however, the massive influx of new users was a technical challenge.
“This immediate, massive spike was beyond what we had anticipated,” Ian Petchenik, the website’s communications director, stated. He added: “In total, we processed 76.2 million requests related to this flight alone — that’s any action by a user, like clicking on the flight icon, clicking on the aircraft information in the left side box, or adjusting settings.”
He predicts that this particular flight search record will remain unbroken “for a long while.”
