How many commercial flights fly in a day?
Google- Anushka Garg
Assumptions:
-
We are talking globally
-
We are talking about passenger flights and nothing else
No. of flights flying in a day will be directly proportional to the airport capacity of making the flights fly i.e.
-
the number of available runways
-
how busy is the airport and hence runway capacity
|
# of airports |
# of runways |
Frequency of take-off |
Total flights per day |
|
|
Heavy Traffic (HT) |
4 |
Every 5 minutes |
||
|
Heavy Traffic (HT) |
2 |
Every 10 minutes |
||
|
Intermediate Traffic |
2 |
Every 15 minutes |
||
|
Intermediate Traffic |
1 |
Every 20 minutes |
||
|
Low Traffic |
1 |
Every 30 minutes |
Total number of airports
Airports are generally directly proportional to a country’s land mass – the bigger and developed a country is – the more airport it has. NA has phenomenal number of airports and boasts airports with most runways Chicago 8, Dallas -6 but not many airport even have 2 runways, for e.g. London Heathrow airport has only 2 runways.
To get get to the number of airports globally I will segregate the countries in three groups.
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North America – (Reason for keeping NA as a separate group as it has phenomenal number of airports 5000 and hence qualifies as a standalone entity. Combining it with any other group will heavily skew the group characteristic)
-
50 HT airports with avg of 4 runways
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50 HT airports with avg of 2 runways
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400 IT airports with avg of 2 runways
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1500 IT airports with avg of 1 runway
-
3000 LT airports with avg of 1 runway
-
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Top 9 countries with maximum area (Russia, Canada, China, Brazil, AUstralia, India etc)
On an average a country in this group have ~200 airports each i.e. total of ~2000 airports. Breakup:
-
HT with 4 lanes (5%) = 100
-
HT with 2 lanes (15%) = 300
-
IT with 2 runways (20%) = 400
-
IT with 1 runway (20%) = 400
-
LT with 1 runway (40%) = 800
3. Rest of the world (190 countries) have average of ~50 airports each i.e. a total of ~10000 airports. Going by the same distribution:
-
HT with 4 runways (5%) = 500
-
HT with 2 runways (15%) = 1500
-
IT with 2 runways (20%) = 2000
-
IT with 1 runway (20%) = 2000
-
LT with 1 runway (40%) = 4000
Lets do the math:
|
# of airports |
Runways |
Frequency of take off |
Frequency per day |
Total flights per day |
|
|
Heavy Traffic (HT) |
50+100+500 = ~ 700 |
4 |
Every 5 minutes |
12*24 = 288 ~ 300 |
700*300*4 = 840,000 ~ 900,000 |
|
Heavy Traffic (HT) |
50+300+1500=~ 2000 |
2 |
Every 10 minutes |
6*24 = 144 ~150 |
2000*150*2 = 600,000 |
|
Intermediate Traffic |
400+400+2000~ 3000 |
2 |
Every 15 minutes |
~100 |
3000*2*100 = 600,000 |
|
Intermediate Traffic |
1500+400+2000 ~ 4000 |
1 |
Every 20 minutes |
~75 |
= 4000*1*75 = 300,000 |
|
Low Traffic |
3000+800+4000 ~ 8000 |
1 |
Every 30 minutes |
~50 |
= 400,000 |
Total flights per day = 2,800,000
Self check: This number is way off. I overestimated number of airports with 4 runways and 2 runways. This number is far far less. ALso, I think I can skip altogether 2 runways for Intermediate traffic as that would be covered in the Heavy traffic one.
The actual number is ~ 100,000 flights