The skies are almost bursting with airplanes—can you guess how many? Three common questions about air travel

▲ EVA Air Kitty Jet (Photo / EVA Airways Corp.)

By Rita

Humans have been traveling by plane for just over 100 years, but nowadays the skies seem packed with aircraft. On clear, sunny days, it’s common to see the trails of planes flying overhead.

According to data from the International Air Transport Association (IATA), commercial planes carried around 4 billion passengers this year—nearly double the number from 12 years ago. Just how many airplanes are actually flying,The Daily Telegraphhas compiled answers to several common aviation-related questions.

1. How many airplanes are there?
This isn’t a simple question, because although every airplane has a registration number and is tracked, research bodies can’t monitor the status of every single aircraft. However, aircraft analysts estimatethat there are currently around 23,600 airplanes in total, including both passenger and cargo planes, with approximately 2,500 of them in storage. But another figure provided by an amateur website suggests that around 39,000 airplanes are currently in use.

▲ Global flight radar map (Image / Screenshot from Flightradar24)

2. How many airplanes are in the sky? According to pilots on FlightRadar24, if we’re talking about the annual peak,
it’s probably between 2pm and 4pm on a Friday in July or August, when there are over 16,000 airplanes flying at the same time. But at the same time of year in January or February, that number drops to around 13,000.That’s probably between 2 p.m. and 4 p.m. on a Friday in July or August, when there are over 16,000 airplanes flying in the sky. But at the same time of day in January or February, there are only about 13,000.

3. How many airplanes go missing?
Between 1948 and 2014, 85 airplanes disappeared from monitoring systems, 26 of which were jet airliners. Fifty-nine crashed into the sea and 26 disappeared over land. The most recent example is Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370—despite three months of searching by authorities, nothing was found.