Have you ever wondered where traffic comes from – especially when there’s no accident? We all want to get somewhere, so what’s the hold up? Well it’s usually some sort of bottleneck. According to Wired Magazine, a similar issue may be affecting our airways. Apparently, unraveling the airspace above New York City may be the key to preventing flight delays.

As Wired reports: “More than 2 million flights pass over the city every year, most traveling to and from the metropolitan area’s three busiest airports: John F. Kennedy, Newark, and LaGuardia. And all that traffic squeezes through a network of aerial routes first laid out for the mail planes of the 1920s. Aircraft are tracked by antiquated, ground-based radar and guided by verbal instructions issued over simplex radios, technology that predates the pocket calculator. The system is extremely safe—no commercial flight has been in a midair collision over the US in 22 years—but, because the Federal Aviation Administration treats each plane as if it were a 2,000-foot-tall, 6- by 6-mile block lumbering through the troposphere, New York is running out of air.” Click Read More for additional information.

Also, check out some artwork featured in Seeing the Art in Aircraft