How many airports are there in the world?
How many airports are there in the world?
about 45,000 with runways — but only around 4,000 with scheduled airline service
Roughly one airport in ten has a paved runway long enough for a jet airliner, and about one in a thousand handles the majority of the world's passengers.
The answer depends entirely on what counts as an airport, and the honest response is three numbers rather than one. Open aviation databases list roughly 45,000 places with a runway, from international hubs to grass strips on farms. Around 4,000 of those have scheduled commercial airline service. About 60 of them handle over 20 million passengers a year. The United States alone accounts for around 13,000 of the runway count, mostly small private and municipal fields.
How the figure is arrived at
Aviation databases compile national aeronautical information publications, which every country produces for pilots, plus civil aviation authority registers. The scheduled-service count comes from airline timetable data instead, which is why it is far smaller and far more stable.
How confident it is
- Low estimate
- 40,000
- High estimate
- 50,000
- Spread
- 1.3× between the bounds
Other things people built counts
- How many countries are there in the world? 195 — or 193, or 206, or 249, depending on who is counting
- How many cars are there in the world? about 1.5 billion motor vehicles
- How many planes are in the air right now? roughly 10,000 to 20,000 at any moment
- How many languages are there in the world? about 7,150 living languages
- How many McDonald's are there? about 43,000 in over 100 countries
- How many phones are there in the world? about 8.9 billion mobile connections — more than there are people
- How many nuclear weapons are there? about 12,200 warheads
- How many websites are there? about 1.1 billion hostnames — but only around 200 million active
- How many books have ever been published? about 130 million as of 2010 — probably over 200 million now
- How many ATMs are there in the world? about 3 million
- How many cities are there in the world? about 10,000 with over 50,000 people; 33 megacities over 10 million
- How many buildings are there in the world? somewhere between 1.5 and 4 billion
- How many computers are there in the world? roughly 2 billion personal computers in use
- How many miles of road are there in the world? about 64 million km — roughly 40 million miles
Common questions
- How many airports are there in the world?
- about 45,000 with runways — but only around 4,000 with scheduled airline service
- How is that estimated?
- Aviation databases compile national aeronautical information publications, which every country produces for pilots, plus civil aviation authority registers. The scheduled-service count comes from airline timetable data instead, which is why it is far smaller and far more stable.
Related pages
- How many countries are there in the world? 195 — or 193, or 206, or 249, depending on who is counting
- How many cars are there in the world? about 1.5 billion motor vehicles
- How many planes are in the air right now? roughly 10,000 to 20,000 at any moment
- How many languages are there in the world? about 7,150 living languages
- How many McDonald's are there? about 43,000 in over 100 countries
- How many phones are there in the world? about 8.9 billion mobile connections — more than there are people
- How many nuclear weapons are there? about 12,200 warheads
- How many websites are there? about 1.1 billion hostnames — but only around 200 million active
- How many people are there in the world? Living things and the natural world
- How many stars are there in the universe? Space and the universe
- How many bones are in the human body? The human body
- How many grains of sand are there on Earth? Living things and the natural world
- How many ants are there in the world? Living things and the natural world
- How many trees are there in the world? Living things and the natural world
Sources
- OurAirports — OurAirports (Public domain)