We live in a world where it is difficult to imagine traveling long distances without air travel. Rarely do we stop to wonder how much air travel has developed in the past few decades to become such an essential part of our daily lives. And how little we understand how it all works.
Here are some facts to wrap your head around this fantastic mode of travel:
- An airplane travels at an average of 35,000 feet or 7 miles above the surface of the earth at 550 miles per hour with an outside temperature of -65°F and accounts for less than 2% of global CO2 emissions.
- There can be over 20,000 flights flying across the world at any given time, with over 30 million journeys in 2011.
- There are more than 30 flights each day between New York and London.
- The busiest international air route between Hong Kong and Taipei, Taiwan ferries over 650,000 passengers each month.
- More than a million people travel on the world’s busiest domestic air route every month from Tokyo Haneda Airport to New Chitose Airport in Sapporo, Japan.
- Air travel is the safest mode of transportation with a fatality rate of less than 0.000024%, however, almost 7 bags are displaced per 1,000 passengers.
- Almost all airlines depend entirely on premium services for passengers for their profits.
- Baggage fees and flight change fees account for a major chunk of profits for airlines, with over $3.35 billion from baggage fees and $2.81 from flight change fees being generated in 2013.
- More than 20 flights took off at the world’s busiest airport, Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport in the time it took for you to read this article.