About how many people are travelling in the air at any time?

Question

Could be some calculation involving the number of flights x load factors?

Answer 1

about 66,000 at any given time just seen the statistic on cnn last night

Answer 2

Over a 20 year average about 1.1 million people have flown commercially every day world wide. Lets say that between short hops and transcontinental / transoceanic flights that an average time in the air is 4 hours (1/6 of a day), which means slightly under 200,000 are airborne at any given time. This does not include private or corporate or military aviation, so you could add another 20,000 or so to the figure since commercial aviation carries about 10% of the passengers. Also, there are far more "enplanements" today than 20 years go, so the average given above is probably quite conservative. Therefore somewhere around 250,000 would be in the ballpark, and during peak periods, maybe 350,000.

Answer 3

hundreds of thousands at one time