Via FlightRadar24.com, a real-time view of the airliners in the skies over Europe right now. If you have seen one of these in normal circumstances, you know that it's basically all airplanes. Today you can see traffic headed in and out of Istanbul, and Milan, and Rome, and... that's it. No Heathrow, no Charles de Gaulle, no Frankfurt, no Schiphol.
For comparison, from a Dutch site, a thumbnail view of normal circumstances below. This is becoming quite an amazingly profound effect, at least in the short term.
We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com.
James Fallows is a national correspondent for The Atlantic and has written for the magazine since the late 1970s. He has reported extensively from outside the United States and once worked as President Carter's chief speechwriter. He and his wife, Deborah Fallows, are the authors of the new book Our Towns: A 100,000-Mile Journey Into the Heart of America, which has been a New York Times best-seller and is the basis of a forthcoming HBO documentary.