There’s an aerial express lane 100 miles wide stretching above the Atlantic, where more than a thousand planes crisscross the jet stream’s 150 mph winds. Spotty radar coverage over the ocean calls for predetermined routes, creating a consistent traffic pattern. Here’s the resulting skyway—which can shave an hour off a trip from North America to Europe—and the rest of the 125,798 flight paths blazed every night.
This article was originally published in the Spring 2019 Transportation issue of Popular Science.