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Anyone else surprised by the number of flights in the air at any given time? I never even imagined that there was this much activity even though I'm a frequent

• bulltale 14y ago
  I read somewhere that on average at any given time, 70-80% of all large commercial planes in service is in the air. Compare that to trains or trucks.
  • losvedir 14y ago
    Well, yeah, but those aren't meant to fly... :-p Seriously, though, that number is quite impressive. In order for that number to work across the population of airplanes, that means on average each aircraft individually needs to spend 70-80% of its time flying. Yikes! I've tried searching a bit for a source, but unfortunately can't find one. If you know where you got that from, I'd love to know.
    • bulltale 14y ago
      I did some digging and my statement only seems to apply to long-haul flights, as mentioned in this thread [1]. "Well,most long-haul fleets fly a lot more than short-haul ones.BA 772s and VS 343s fly about 17 hours per day." That is 71%! Average utilization is between 42% and 48%. See [2], Figure 6. [1] http://www.airliners.net/aviation-forums/general_aviation/read.main/1164547/ http://www.airliners.net/aviation-forums/general_aviation/re... [2] http://web.mit.edu/airlines/analysis/analysis_airline_industry.html http://web.mit.edu/airlines/analysis/analysis_airline_indust...
      • khuey 14y ago
        My guess is that most long-haul aircraft are flying overnight (since you have to do to a trans-oceanic route) while most short-haul aircraft are parked overnight (there aren't that many short-haul red-eye flights).