Amazing Aviation Facts

I recently did an Ignite talk on Amazing Aviation. People were blown away with some of the facts I presented. Many of them are very surprising. Here’s some of the doozies in a top 10 list!

  1. Only 5% of the worlds population have ever been on an airplane.
  2. Flight is not the safest form of travel. The bus is on all measures. The motorcycle is the most dangerous on all measures.
  3. The airline industry has currently made a net loss of $31 billion dollars since 1940.
  4. The average profit per seat on a 1 hour flight is $2.20.
  5. In 1940 to fly London – New York it cost 1 years wages. Today it costs the wage of working only Monday & Tuesday.
  6. The average age of commercial aircraft is 19 years. (How safe is a 19 year old car?)
  7. Tom Stuker is the worlds most frequent flyer. He has traveled over 10 million miles.
  8. There are over 14,000 commercial flights in the air at any one time.
  9. There are over 3 million people in the air on planes at any one time.
  10. The worlds first flying car arrives in 2012. Called the Terrafugia it costs $194,000

Statistics are fun, Love Stevie.

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14 thoughts on “Amazing Aviation Facts

  1. One stat says it all for me: $2 per hour. For how long will they keep this up? Or, how much of the other crap will they ditch just to keep up with fuel costs? I suppose the #mindspam won’t be going away any time soon.

  2. Firstly all of these stat’s are 100% correct. Yes, most of it was gained independently through a number of aviation sites. Some of them include:

    boeing.com
    airliners.net
    flyertalk.com
    wikipedia.org
    faa.com
    ntsb.com

    Among others and some books that I have on Aviation.
    Steve.

  3. Yep – it is an amazing statistics on the poor profitability. Yet, for some reason entrepreneurs still seem to want to be lining up to launch airlines. I guess it is a sexy thing to own an ‘Airline’ – but the industry has never really made any money, and never really will(as a whole). It only exists because it is of national importance, needed infrastructure.

    In the end Jerry Seinfeld was right when he said ”

    …. the whole flying thing, the planes, the airports, the travel. It’s all just a trick to sell $12 tuna sandwiches at the airport!”

    Steve.

  4. No I didn’t. But for being an aviation freak for a number of years, I’m certain the safety statistics are very closely aligned to how well developed the economy in question is. Africa is the worst continent for accidents, and South America is next. I also believe that Australia has never had what is known as a ‘Total Hull Loss’ on a commercial jet liner. The only country in the world….

    Steve.

  5. seriously..5% of the worlds population have ever been on an airplane.i think ‘now everyone can fly’ like tnas fernandes said,and mostly they hve ever been an airplane.

  6. Steve mate, greetings from Australia. I just saw an episode of Q.I. where Alan said at anyone time there are around 400000 people in the air at any given time. Not that I don’t believe you of course but where did you get the figure of three million. Cheers

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