Thousands of people watched the progress of Priti Patel’s flight from Nairobi as she flew back to Britain under orders from Prime Minister Theresa May.
Following the news of Ms Patel’s return, website Flightradar 24 reported on Twitter that more than 22,000 people were tracking the Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner’s flight on its site, although it was not absolutely certain Ms Patel was aboard the KQA100 Kenya Airways flight to Heathrow.
Usually flights on the website are tracked by one to 200 people.
Twitter users tweeted their thoughts on the flight tracker, comparing it to watching OJ Simpson attempt to outrun police in his car in 1994, or tracking Santa around the globe on Christmas Eve.
READ MORE: Priti Patel believed to be en route to Downing Street to learn her fate
Author and playwright Bonnie Greer tweeted: “The #BBC’s doing OJ and the white Bronco thing. #PritiPatel”.
Twitter user @Scott_Jamison wrote: “More people watched that Priti Patel flight than will be tracking Santa on that satellite thing on Christmas Eve.”
Kenya Airways confirmed the airline does not offer Wi-Fi on any of its London flights, so Ms Patel will have been unaware of the huge interest in her return to the UK.
READ MORE: Priti Patel believed to be en route to Downing Street to learn her fate
In October 2015, 35,000 football fans watched live on Flightradar24 as Jurgen Klopp flew into Liverpool to officially join Liverpool FC as the team’s manager.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here