How many commercial airplane flights are there every day?

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Request for Question Clarification by justaskscott-ga on 28 Aug 2005 16:56 PDT

Are you interested in statistics for the US or for the world?

I have found US statistics for May 2005 and previous months. 
(Dividing by the number of days of the month would yield the average
per day.)  Would these statistics be sufficient?

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Clarification of Question by mugsy53-ga on 28 Aug 2005 17:47 PDT

US statistics are OK.  I am interested in the number of commercial
flights daily.  Thank you!

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Request for Question Clarification by justaskscott-ga on 28 Aug 2005 17:51 PDT

Would my suggestion of deriving the daily number from the monthly
number be acceptable?  Or do you actually need each day's number? 
(The number, of course, would vary from day to day throughout the year
and over the years.)

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Clarification of Question by mugsy53-ga on 28 Aug 2005 19:31 PDT

the monthly number is just fine.  Thanks!

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Request for Question Clarification by justaskscott-ga on 28 Aug 2005 20:11 PDT

Sorry to post another request; but I just realized that the statistics
I found relate to US airlines carrying domestic passengers, rather
than domestic and international airlines carrying passengers anywhere.

I have seen other statistics.  But it would be complicated to define
what counts as a flight for purposes of those databases -- for
example, whether a flight means landing in the US, taking off in the
US, or both.  I'd probably be able to figure it out; but it would take
some time, and wouldn't be suitable for this price level of question.

Would statistics for U.S. airlines carrying domestic passengers be okay?

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Clarification of Question by mugsy53-ga on 28 Aug 2005 22:48 PDT

sure, domestic only is fine.  thanks again.

Hi mugsy53,

According to Table 5 of this document, there were 846,880 flights in May 2005.

"May Airline Traffic: Five-Month Domestic Traffic Up 5.8 Percent From 2004"
Bureau of Transportation Statistics
http://www.bts.gov/press_releases/2005/bts036_05/html/bts036_05.html

Dividing that number by 31 days results in an average of 27,319 flights per day.

You can find the statistics for previous months in these documents:

"Airline Traffic Data Press Releases"
Bureau of Transportation Statistics
http://www.bts.gov/press_releases/airline_traffic_data.html

- justaskscott


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Statistics web sites.