1 Billion Passengers Daily

The folks at Symbol have a piece on the need for a much wider rollout of the Trusted Traveler. They are spot on. What I did wonder about was the opening two sentences.

Globally, more than one billion passengers travel on commercial airliners every day. Likewise, over one billion pieces of luggage are also transported daily.

One billion is a lot; two billion of anything is twice a lot. So, I got to thinking.....1 billion passengers a day means that every person on the planet would have to fly commercially once every 6 days.

There is something like 1800 to 2000 active commercial airlines. Say the average airplane holds no more than 150 people. If you assume load factors of 80% (probably high) you get 120 seats. If each plane flew four daily flights it could accommodate 480 passengers.

That would take about 2 million planes – that’s the seat equivalent of 1000 MD 80s.

DFW Airports share of that capacity? That would be 20 to 40 million passengers daily. Think about what the off schedule operation would look like after one of those summertime toad stranglers roared through the Metroplex.

Update - should read - that’s the seat equivalent of 1000 MD 80s for each of the 1800 to 2000 worldwide commercial carriers.