Have you ever looked up and wondered…how many airplanes are flying around the world right now? If you’ve spent any time browsing a flight radar website, you’ll know the sky is an overwhelmingly busy place.
Some days, the sky is busier than others though, like July 1 2018. This was one of aviation’s busiest days in history according to Flightradar24.com.
On this day a whopping 202,157 planes took off and landed around the globe. At ‘peak hour’ more than 19,000 flights were in the air at the same time.
Yesterday was the busiest day of the year in the skies so far and our busiest day ever. 202,157 flights tracked! The first time we've tracked more than 200,000 flights in a single day on https://t.co/krDfUYSbzK pic.twitter.com/ApCMHaVEQp
— Flightradar24 (@flightradar24) June 30, 2018
Let’s just let that sink in for a moment. It’s hard to get your head around, right?
The flight tracking website said this was first time it had ever tracked more than 200,000 flights in a single day, let alone more than 19,000 at the same time.
So what does a normal day in the sky look like? Last year data aviation company FlightAware found that during 2017, the average number of planes in the air at any given moment was 9,728.
No one has pinpointed why so many people were flying on Sunday, July 1. Especially as the day of the week, nor the month fits in with Flightradar24’s usual trends.
When questions about trends, Flightradar24 said the month of August and the days Thursday and Friday were usually the busiest times in the air.
Christmas Day, on the other hand, is usually the least busy day of the year.
It will be interesting to see if this record will be broken when August rolls around!
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