Decus
Platinum Member
Although there may be more cars than airplanes travel numbers would indicate that air travel is by no means small. Remember that one cross country roundtrip by air is the equivalent of 20% of a car's yearly CO2 production (according to the NY Times article I posted above). These are the numbers for 2017:
"Americans were also the most frequent fliers by nationality and represented nearly a fifth of the total air traffic in 2017. Note that these figures are not simply the number of unique passengers that flew, but rather the tally of passenger journeys, so one person might account for several journeys depending on how much they traveled last year. Here’s how the totals of fliers by nationality (not by residence) shaped up.
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"Americans were also the most frequent fliers by nationality and represented nearly a fifth of the total air traffic in 2017. Note that these figures are not simply the number of unique passengers that flew, but rather the tally of passenger journeys, so one person might account for several journeys depending on how much they traveled last year. Here’s how the totals of fliers by nationality (not by residence) shaped up.
- United States of America: 632 million, 18.6% of all passengers
- People’s Republic of China: 555 million, 16.3% of all passengers
- India: 161.5 million, 4.7% of all passengers
- United Kingdom: 147 million, 4.3% of all passengers
- Germany: 114.4 million, 3.5%"
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