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They are, but that number represents U.S. flights only and is pretty grossly underestimated. Flight volume hasn't changed significantly, but the passenger volum
by csteubs 6y ago
They are, but that number represents U.S. flights only and is pretty grossly underestimated. Flight volume hasn't changed significantly, but the passenger volume is way down which is a good thing for our purposes. There were 64,523 flights on March 29th (around the peak of the initial wave of lockdowns), compared to 154,000 back in January of this year. I'm using a dumpster fire of a source (Forbes) for those numbers but they can be found here: https://www.forbes.com/sites/gabrielleigh/2020/03/30/the-number-of-daily-flights-is-now-dropping-drastically-the-latest-in-aviation/#9a87bf43d4c2 https://www.forbes.com/sites/gabrielleigh/2020/03/30/the-num...
Even if global flights slowed to post-2001 levels, we'd still be capturing vastly more data than the ~300 or so commercial imaging satellites. Our margins are fairly wide in that sense.