Every ADS-B-tracked flight visualized in this print, captured over 5 days.

MAD logged 4,842 flights across five days from April 22 to 26, 2026, averaging 968 movements per day and 40.4 per hour around the clock. Departures edged out arrivals, 2,536 to 2,306, with 85 ground operations also captured. April 24 was the busiest single day at 1,073 flights. The noon hour carried the heaviest load, with 367 total movements between 12:00 and 13:00 CEST, split 214 departures to 153 arrivals. A secondary departure surge appeared at 16:00, producing 243 outbound flights against only 113 arrivals. The quietest stretch ran between 02:00 and 05:00, bottoming out at 23 total movements in the 02:00 hour. Palma de Mallorca was the top route by a clear margin at 179 combined movements, followed by Barcelona at 143 and Rome Fiumicino at 107. London Heathrow and Paris-Orly both crossed 100 movements. Ibiza, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Lisbon, and Brussels rounded out the top ten. Approach and departure headings concentrated heavily in the ENE, NNE, and NE quadrants, accounting for the three highest-count directions in both flow datasets. ENE led all approach directions at 395 and all departure directions at 431. The 1,128 unique aircraft came from registrations across more than 40 countries, with Italian, US, German, British, and Portuguese registrations among the most represented identified groups. Cruise altitudes clustered between 36,000 and 38,000 feet, with the 36,000-37,000 foot band producing the highest ADS-B point density of any range. The average groundspeed across all tracked legs was 312 knots, and combined flight legs covered just over 3.1 million nautical miles. The longest recorded flight connected to Abu Dhabi at 3,335 nautical miles, while the highest-altitude track, an arrival from Rzeszow, reached 47,500 feet.