“NORAD Tracks Santa” is an initiative by the North American Aerospace Defense Command, which helps Santa to make a safe journey and also lets eagerly waiting children know Santa’s whereabouts. NORAD employs cutting edge technology powered by Avaya solutions to follow Santa on his mission by monitoring data from radar, satellites and Santa Cams strategically positioned across the globe. NORAD has been running the program for 58 years, which has now developed a mass appeal in the country. This year the program is sponsored by 55 corporate houses.
In a release, Navy Lt. Cmdr. Bill Lewis, Spokesperson for NORAD, said “Santa travels at the speed of starlight and he's got the ability to circumnavigate the globe and do his mission with the speed and accuracy that nobody's ever seen. Canada has the 'pilots' this year who will take on the 'fighter jet' mission, and as Santa makes his approach into North America, [the 'jets'] go up, make sure it's him, verify it on the flight plan that he gave us and let him go on his way.”
NORAD Tracks Santa hotline received around 114,000 calls and 11,000 emails from children in 2012 during the 23 hours of its operation. The program now has its own website which will go-live along with satellite tracking, ground-based radar tracking and “fighter jets” tracking options. This year, Sirius radio will also provide a live-feed commentary of Santa’s journey. During December 2013, the website recorded 22.3 million visitors from more than 235 countries and the Facebook page of the program recorded 1.2 million followers.
This year the hotline will be manned by nearly 1,250 volunteers helping NORAD successfully carry out the initiative. The hotline is usually operational from 3:00 AM Mountain Standard Time on December 24 until 3:00 AM on December 25 in line with the Santa Claus fable which says Santa travels on the Christmas Eve to deliver gifts to children across the world. The volunteers take turns to man the hotline in a two-hour shift during this time and provide responses in eight languages including English, German, Spanish, Chinese, French, Japanese, Italian and Portuguese.
The program was initiated in 1955 when NORAD received a phone call based on a newspaper ad by a renowned departmental store to call Santa directly. The newspaper ad erroneously carried the phone number of NORAD instead of the phone number of the departmental store, leading to the initiation of an innovative “NORAD Tracks Santa” initiative, which has been successfully running over the last 58 years.