The flight carrying the third most senior political figure in the U.S. has become the most-tracked flight in history
As U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was high above the clouds, users began flocking to the popular FlightRadar24 smartphone app.
It’s understood 2.92 million people were on the app and website to follow the U.S. Air Force jet with the callsign ‘SPAR 19’.
“Because of unprecedented sustained tracking interest in SPAR19, Flightradar24 services are under extremely heavy load,” FlightRadar24 said.
The jet was forced to detour over Indonesia to avoid any potential issues in the South China Sea.
Beijing warned the U.S. against the Taiwan visit, as authorities prepare to hold military drills across six areas near the democratically-ruled island.
“Some users may currently experience issues accessing the site, our teams are working on restoring full functionality to all users as quickly as possible.”
FLIGHTRADAR24
The Boeing C-40C landed in Taipei, with 708,000 people tracking the flight when it touched down.
The average flight time between Pelosi’s origin of Kuala Lumpur to Taipei is around four hours. However, SPAR19 took over seven hours to reach Taiwan.
“Unfortunately, due to the volume of users, it was necessary to deploy our waiting room functionality, which meters access to Flightradar24 for non-subscribers,” the website said.
After SPAR19 touched down, access was restored quickly for FlightRadar24 users.
“We continue to make improvements to our systems to provide additional capacity for flights of extreme interest,” the website said.
