More take offs per day in the US than the rest of the world

[rivetjoint]

Someone once told me that there are more commercial aircraft (airlines, courier, cargo, biz jet etc) take offs per day in the US than the rest of the world put together.

I have no idea on the numbers involved to even know how far from accurate that claim is. Any suggestions?

[misd-agin]

Originally Posted by rivetjoint

Someone once told me that there are more commercial aircraft (airlines, courier, cargo, biz jet etc) take offs per day in the US than the rest of the world put together.

I have no idea on the numbers involved to even know how far from accurate that claim is. Any suggestions?

Probably very true. Just read a news report, within the last two weeks (USA Today?), that told the percentage of a/c in the air worldwide and how many of them were in the U.S. Forget the exact number but it was something like 2/3 or 3/4.

If you are seriously interested I'd recommend reading any aviation or ATC related articles in USA Today's for the last several weeks. Good chance that is where I saw the article.

[vapilot2004]

Numbers from the BTS

Not sure how they stack up against the world:

[seacue]

I don't know the numbers from the rest of the world, but http://flightaware.com/live/ says they tracked 36,936 "arrivals" in the USA in the past 24 hours. Look at the bottom of the page. That would probably be 0645 Saturday 4 Nov to 0645 Sunday 5 Nov. Saturday is a reduced schedule for some airlines. These arrivals are flights which filed a flight plan. Some low-altitude flghts do not. Some flight plans are filed by non-commercial flights. It does not include military flights.

Look at the time-lapse images you can link through the above page. It shows about 5700 simultaneously-active flights during the middle of the day.