From the time it lifted off from Kuala Lumpur at 15:42 local time, SPAR19 was already the most tracked flight on Flightradar24 among active flights. By the time it landed in Taipei, SPAR19 was being tracked by more than 708,000 people around the world, making it the most tracked live flight in Flightradar24 history. Over the seven hours from Kuala Lumpur to Taipei, a total of 2.92 million people followed at least a portion of the flight.
Why are people tracking SPAR19?
Media reports indicated that the Speaker of the US House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi was onboard traveling to Taiwan. Subsequent video from Reuters in Taipei confirmed that Pelosi was indeed onboard the aircraft. Flying through Indonesia more than 200,000 people tracked the flight and the numbers continued to climb as the aircraft neared Taiwan. Upon landing in Taipei, 708,000 people were tracking the flight.
Impact on Flightradar24 service
An unprecedented, sustained interest in this particular flight led to extremely heavy load on Flightradar24 infrastructure. Our teams immediately began efforts to maintain the stability of our services. Unfortunately, due to the volume of users, it was necessary to deploy our waiting room functionality, which meters access to Flightradar24 for non-subscribers. Shortly after SPAR19 landed, normal access for all users was restored quickly. We continue to make improvements to our systems to provide additional capacity for flights of extreme interest.
