The global frequency of flights.
Posted: 06 Jun 2009, 19:06
A conversation at work today threw up the question of how many commercial aircraft were airborne, globally, at any one time. Not having that info to hand, I promised to try and find out.
A bit of searching shows that in the US, during daylight, it's an average of 5,500 aircraft airborne at once, with a total of around 44,000 flights each day! Globally, there's no way of telling but some people have calculated that a flight is taking off somewhere in the world every second and that around one million people are airborne at any one time.
Now I'm willing to wager that there's somebody here who can give me more accurate statistics than that! Who'd care to have a stab at it?
Ian
A bit of searching shows that in the US, during daylight, it's an average of 5,500 aircraft airborne at once, with a total of around 44,000 flights each day! Globally, there's no way of telling but some people have calculated that a flight is taking off somewhere in the world every second and that around one million people are airborne at any one time.
Now I'm willing to wager that there's somebody here who can give me more accurate statistics than that! Who'd care to have a stab at it?
Ian
