On America’s busiest travel day, it’s worth pulling back — or up — to marvel at how the globe has been so thoroughly knitted by aviation. About 2 million Americans are in the air on a typical day. In 2009, 4.796 billion passengers traveled through the world’s airports. A dizzying variety of products flows through the skies worldwide (the impact on commerce from the eruption of one volcano in Iceland illustrated this). And of course less welcome things move this way, as well. It’s very likely that a jet carried West Nile virus to North America in 1999.

Three years ago, I marked the day before Thanksgiving by focusing on the mesmerizing animated visualizations of flight patterns by Aaron Koblin (video above). He has since moved, no surprise, to Google.

Koblin is one of an emerging breed of illustrators working to bring life and meaning to otherwise static data sets. Another is Adam Nieman, whose depictions of the world’s waters and atmosphere as spherical volumes constitute a real breakthrough in conveying the real meaning of a finite “global commons.” This kind of work is as vital as the basic science that’s accumulating the data behind the imagery.

Since Koblin’s effort, others have followed up with global views of aviation:

Are you up there? Make sure to thank your pilot, and the air traffic controllers.

Postscript, Aug. 4, 2016 | Koblin has come a long way. Here’s his fantastic TED talk, from 2011!