History, as recorded by Flightradar24: "a whopping grand total of 153,359 commercial flights were tracked between 00:00 UTC and 23:59 UTC on July 23, 2026" So I would say it's justified to qualify it. Not sure how Flightradar24's coverage has evolved over time, but it could theoretically be that there were more flights at some point before 2020, but some of them weren't tracked?
I dont think they are refering to that. I think it is a reference to all the non-recorded flights happening every day. Maybe there was a day last week with more flying, but it wasnt all recorded.
Flying is a bit unique in that there aren't really viable alternatives. It also accounts for a fairly small portion of emissions. Land transport (cars and trucks), power generation, and heating are where the big wins exist with viable alternatives.
It only represents a small portion of emissions because so few people fly. For the people that do fly it represents a large portion of their emissions.
It’s also the activity least likely to be decarbonised.
Of course there are alternatives, I haven’t flown on a plane since 2001.
There are plenty of alternatives. Most importantly: traveling locally. Nobody needs to visit 30 countries by 30 years old or whatever dumb social media excuses they have.
Air travel is a very recent modern invention(1960s, at least for everyday folk) and people act like flying around the world is a right.
Modern capitalism is an excess machine and it'll feed us constant excuses for why our reasons are valid. Air travel is a great example. Travel and tourism are seen as "musts" by people nowadays. It's insane how destructive and unnecessary it is. It's wild how entitled everyone is nowadays. I'll happily take down votes for calling out the insane excess that we have nowadays. We're killing ourselves one funco pop at a time and we all deserve that funco pop according to the latest excuse(won't someone blame the rich!!!)
Even if you are correct, in practice there's no way to put this particularly genie back in the bottle. It's the same as trying to argue that we should solve our energy problems by asking people to consume less energy. Outside of some climate dictatorship, it's not happening.
Also, on travel, I think there's a lot to be said for the value of travel and being exposed to other cultures and societies. "Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness[..]" and all that.
I believe climate dictatorship will come already this century if our decarbonisation efforts stay as weak as they are. It won't be under that name though. One sufficient policy would be to price everything in money + co2 equivalent currency. Every person in a country gets a certain co2 currency budget per year. Pretty simple actually (yeah yeah, the small print will still be long but the gist is simple).
For transport you're right. I think the parent your referring to was specifically saying there's no alternative way to power a plane. That's my assumption at least.
I was saying a bit of both. megablast is correct that there are alternatives, but I'd maybe quibble with "viable". For example you can get from Stockholm to Umeå with a 1 hour flight or a 6-8 hour train journey, is the train a viable alternative? For aviation there aren't alternative fuels and on many journeys even the alternative transport options aren't in the same ballpark.
Calling it a “1 hour flight” is a bit misleading when comparing transport options. The relevant number is door-to-door travel time.
Once you include getting out of Stockholm to the airport, security, boarding, the flight itself, possible baggage collection, and the trip into Umeå, I would be surprised if the total were much below 4 hours. Comparable German domestic flights such as Hamburg–Munich usually took me around 4–4.5 hours in practice in the past when traveling for work before the pandemic.
That makes the train a 6–8 hour alternative to a roughly 4-hour flight journey. Whether that is viable depends on the traveller, but it is certainly more competitive than “1 hour versus 8 hours” suggests.
I admit that for me, living about an hour north of the Hamburg main station but only 15 minutes from the airport, the plance for a business trip in Munich can still be a viable (albeit seldom taken) option. More often than not, if time permits, I take the train, work on the train. But as said - there still are situations, that make flying such a distance viable (to me).
I just wanted to point out, that it is not as clear cut as 1 hour vs. 6 to 8 hours.
In the UK I could get from Central London to Central Glasgow in 4.5 hours on the train. The same trip on a flight, it takes an hour to get the airport (assuming it's not one of the budget airlines pretending Essex or Bedfordshire is London...), I need to be there 2 hours before (maybe less is you are brave and Security isn't messed up) the flight takes an hour and then I have to get out of the airport and find my way from Paisley back to Glasgow Central.
Of course there are a lot of variables, if instead I leave from my house the aircraft would actually be faster, mostly due to the extra time it takes to get to Central London and from Waterloo to Euston.
In reality we usually drive in about 6-8 hours because, as a family of 4 traveling, it's considerably cheaper even before you take into account having transport on the other end.
I'd say that 4-6 hours is often the cut-off point for total travel time city-to-city -- provided that the train is fast.
I and a friend once started at Stockholm Central station to Malmö Central Station at the same time. I boarded a bullet train; he took the bus to the airport ...
We arrived at the same time six hours later.
I've been looking at travel in Japan recently. Between Hiroshima and Tokyo, the bullet train (fast Shinkansen) and flight are both about four hours.
A bullet train is much more comfortable than flight within these limits because there are so fewer steps: no travel to/from airport, fewer tickets to book and often no check-in or security checkpoint.
Yeah fair, having experienced Japanese trains I fully agree about the comfort. I'm not arguing that we shouldn't build high speed rail and try to shift more travel to trains instead of aviation either to be clear. I love trains and I especially love Shinkansen style trains, but aviation still has a big edge in big parts of the world and on some journey lengths.
For short trips. Most plane trips are at a distance where there isn't a viable alternative. Sure there are some nice trains that can handle the more common trips, but airplanes really shine for much longer trips.
And planes go to more places than trains do. You want to add a new destination? Go through a few years of planning and construction for a couple thousand feet of tarmac, and people can go there using existing planes. Best of all, you don't need a large passenger base to justify the expense.
For rail? You're looking at an order of magnitude more for planning and construction, all new infrastructure, all new rail stock. It will take a much larger passenger base to justify the expense and effort.
Airplanes don't just shine for longer trips. There have been some interesting developments with commuter airplanes that are either all electric or hybrid with a 200-plus-mile range. If they are as energy efficient as they promise to be, we could see a resurgence in municipal airports for transportation between regional centers where rail is either unavailable or excessively expensive.
Yes, let's make things more expensive, cause we experts know best. That poor guy that needs to attend a family funeral, he's a loser that should stay home. Inflation for the Win!
and according to the article the last record was 200k planes per day on june 29 2025, while july 23rd had more than 280k - so while efficiency may be going up (how many of those 280k planes are in the modern 100-120mpg range?) total flights are as well. Result: total emissions are steadily increasing.
I think the way airline tickets are priced is a big factor, and needs to change.
It is often cheaper to take a connecting flight to an airport and flying from there than to start from that airport.
That disincentivises taking a low-carbon-emission train to the airport and experiencing more of (and spending more in) the city near the airport than just its airport.
Often, for longer flights, the more stops, the cheaper the total ticket gets. Planes consume more fuel at take-off and landing, making the the carbon footprint increase with these cheaper tickets. And the more you fly, the more points you get that could pay for more flights.
It should be the other way around: air-travel carbon tax should be progressive. You should pay more each time if you fly more often. That would reduce the number of flights in total while still allowing everyone to take that "trip of a life-time".
I guess if you are really serious about saving the planet from airplanes, you could start a network of similar-feeling folks and begin randomly bombing enough flights to terrify the world into not flying.
Give yourself an edgy name, like the Children of Kali, to make it stick.
Honestly, if you think the stakes are that high then you implicate yourself with anything but fully committed action. Anything less, and you just seem preachy and screechy.
PS: It's a book called The Ministry of the Future. Try reading once in a while. Whoosh.
I recently read Days of Rage about the various groups committing political violence during the 60s and 70s. Weatherman, Black Panthers, Black Liberation Army, etc.
I don't know if there was really a 'message' more than just reporting what 'happened'. But, I have to say I came away with the idea that that kind of political violence is futile. Non-violent political action seemed to have MUCH more beneficial action than any bomb. (of course it wasn't as clear-cut between non-violent groups and revolutionary groups at the time)
Maybe thats only because I just read the ONE book.
The general impression from talking to people who live then (I was a baby in the 1970s so I knew/know a fair number). The violent groups were looked on as weird or kids who needed to grow up - they were ignored for the most part other than cheering on what the police did.
There is a reason Rosa Parks was chosen to start the bus boycott - she comes off as "just like me" to the average person. Thus when she couldn't take it anymore the rest of America didn't write her off.
That is a terrible way to get the necessary support for climate action and would be actively harmful to the cause.
This argument has been made so often and in so much detail that I’m surprised to still see people suggest climate terrorism in, presumably, good faith.
Modern aviation is an amazing engineering feat (all the environmental issues aside). With such numbers it means that "one in a million" failure occurs roughly evey week, but the fact that we have so little major incidents demonstrates how well aicrafts are engineered.
With numbers like that I guess they have no reason to make flights more comfortable or convenient. I just did a cross country flight and back 2 weeks ago and I'm still recovering from it. I really hate flying now.
The real cost of air travel continues to go down as customers really only discriminate on price. Airlines have tried before to compete on other facets but everything failed.
The best you can do is look at specific carriers, and more importantly specifically what aircraft you'll be flying on.
A cross country flight in economy is going to be more comfortable in a Delta A220 than a United 737 Max. However, because of hubs and lack of competition many non-mega metros don't really have a large amount of choice.
Maybe, I don't know. Sprit Airlines closing up abruptly like it did may refute your premise. They were the cheapest of the cheap, people hated them and now they are gone.
As the country exited COVID, mainline carriers began to really push their basic and barebones fares which directly took away business from ULCCs like Spirit. Spirit never really leveraged their credit cards effectively to help subsidize the cost of seats.
ULCCs thrive when they can maximize their time in the sky across as many different flights as possible. Filling up the day with many different flights allows them to rake in checked-baggage fees, reserved seat fees etc more often than longer mainline carrier flights. All of this went out the window when a large portion of their A320 fleet was grounded because of the P&W engine issues. This absolutely killed their utilization percentage.
Spirit died way more because of business management than it did because customers didn't choose on price.
> With numbers like that I guess they have no reason to make flights more comfortable or convenient. I just did a cross country flight and back 2 weeks ago and I'm still recovering from it. I really hate flying now.
My expectations are low and yet airlines somehow manage to fail.
I made the mistake of booking a flight with frontier
and they "delayed" the flight several times before eventually canceling the whole flight.
All airlines do this. It’s frustrating, and it has to do with playing the game with the DOT. They are punished for cancelling flights, but not delaying them, so the game is to delay rather than cancel until there is truly no option but to cancel. It’s an area of regulation that needs more work.
I am a current airline pilot, and I end up flying on all of them in order to get to and from work. Trust me, they all do this. The impact to you may be less if it’s an airline with more flights, because that airline has more options to recover and fix your experience, but they all do it.
Just looked that up. Good lord, they need to amend the universal declaration of human rights to include flying people 24 hours straight in coach as a violation.
It will surely be a tough sell. It will be very expensive (comparatively), and most travelers won't even want to do it. There's a reason Ethiad is so successful on these kinds of flights because their hub creates a natural stopping point halfway.
This seems like madness to me. A fully loaded 747 has around 140,000 litres of energy-dense jet fuel containing between 2.2 and 2.9 GWh worth of energy - or around two hours output of a typical power station.
This level of profligacy is simply not sustainable.
To summarize, this is the equivalent of someone putting their fingers in their ear and going, "lalalalalala I'm not listening" while someone tells them to stop being a consumption monster.
This feels like one of those cases where it’s safe to say “history” instead of “recorded history.”
History, as recorded by Flightradar24: "a whopping grand total of 153,359 commercial flights were tracked between 00:00 UTC and 23:59 UTC on July 23, 2026" So I would say it's justified to qualify it. Not sure how Flightradar24's coverage has evolved over time, but it could theoretically be that there were more flights at some point before 2020, but some of them weren't tracked?
I dont think they are refering to that. I think it is a reference to all the non-recorded flights happening every day. Maybe there was a day last week with more flying, but it wasnt all recorded.
Even history is not safe if you consider the entire universe.
Technically history only refers to the parts of the past for which we have written records.
Yes let's continue burning fuel. It's fine.
Flying is a bit unique in that there aren't really viable alternatives. It also accounts for a fairly small portion of emissions. Land transport (cars and trucks), power generation, and heating are where the big wins exist with viable alternatives.
It only represents a small portion of emissions because so few people fly. For the people that do fly it represents a large portion of their emissions.
It’s also the activity least likely to be decarbonised.
Of course there are alternatives, I haven’t flown on a plane since 2001.
There are plenty of alternatives. Most importantly: traveling locally. Nobody needs to visit 30 countries by 30 years old or whatever dumb social media excuses they have.
Air travel is a very recent modern invention(1960s, at least for everyday folk) and people act like flying around the world is a right.
Modern capitalism is an excess machine and it'll feed us constant excuses for why our reasons are valid. Air travel is a great example. Travel and tourism are seen as "musts" by people nowadays. It's insane how destructive and unnecessary it is. It's wild how entitled everyone is nowadays. I'll happily take down votes for calling out the insane excess that we have nowadays. We're killing ourselves one funco pop at a time and we all deserve that funco pop according to the latest excuse(won't someone blame the rich!!!)
Even if you are correct, in practice there's no way to put this particularly genie back in the bottle. It's the same as trying to argue that we should solve our energy problems by asking people to consume less energy. Outside of some climate dictatorship, it's not happening.
Also, on travel, I think there's a lot to be said for the value of travel and being exposed to other cultures and societies. "Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness[..]" and all that.
I believe climate dictatorship will come already this century if our decarbonisation efforts stay as weak as they are. It won't be under that name though. One sufficient policy would be to price everything in money + co2 equivalent currency. Every person in a country gets a certain co2 currency budget per year. Pretty simple actually (yeah yeah, the small print will still be long but the gist is simple).
I could easily be convinced that dictatorships make a big comeback this century, however I find it unlikely that they will have a good carbon policy.
I think if high speed rail was a viable option in the US and Europe those numbers would look a lot different.
What?? In Europe there are lots of viable alternatives. Same as Asia!!
For transport you're right. I think the parent your referring to was specifically saying there's no alternative way to power a plane. That's my assumption at least.
I was saying a bit of both. megablast is correct that there are alternatives, but I'd maybe quibble with "viable". For example you can get from Stockholm to Umeå with a 1 hour flight or a 6-8 hour train journey, is the train a viable alternative? For aviation there aren't alternative fuels and on many journeys even the alternative transport options aren't in the same ballpark.
Calling it a “1 hour flight” is a bit misleading when comparing transport options. The relevant number is door-to-door travel time.
Once you include getting out of Stockholm to the airport, security, boarding, the flight itself, possible baggage collection, and the trip into Umeå, I would be surprised if the total were much below 4 hours. Comparable German domestic flights such as Hamburg–Munich usually took me around 4–4.5 hours in practice in the past when traveling for work before the pandemic.
That makes the train a 6–8 hour alternative to a roughly 4-hour flight journey. Whether that is viable depends on the traveller, but it is certainly more competitive than “1 hour versus 8 hours” suggests.
I admit that for me, living about an hour north of the Hamburg main station but only 15 minutes from the airport, the plance for a business trip in Munich can still be a viable (albeit seldom taken) option. More often than not, if time permits, I take the train, work on the train. But as said - there still are situations, that make flying such a distance viable (to me).
I just wanted to point out, that it is not as clear cut as 1 hour vs. 6 to 8 hours.
In the UK I could get from Central London to Central Glasgow in 4.5 hours on the train. The same trip on a flight, it takes an hour to get the airport (assuming it's not one of the budget airlines pretending Essex or Bedfordshire is London...), I need to be there 2 hours before (maybe less is you are brave and Security isn't messed up) the flight takes an hour and then I have to get out of the airport and find my way from Paisley back to Glasgow Central.
Of course there are a lot of variables, if instead I leave from my house the aircraft would actually be faster, mostly due to the extra time it takes to get to Central London and from Waterloo to Euston.
In reality we usually drive in about 6-8 hours because, as a family of 4 traveling, it's considerably cheaper even before you take into account having transport on the other end.
I'd say that 4-6 hours is often the cut-off point for total travel time city-to-city -- provided that the train is fast.
I and a friend once started at Stockholm Central station to Malmö Central Station at the same time. I boarded a bullet train; he took the bus to the airport ... We arrived at the same time six hours later.
I've been looking at travel in Japan recently. Between Hiroshima and Tokyo, the bullet train (fast Shinkansen) and flight are both about four hours.
A bullet train is much more comfortable than flight within these limits because there are so fewer steps: no travel to/from airport, fewer tickets to book and often no check-in or security checkpoint.
Yeah fair, having experienced Japanese trains I fully agree about the comfort. I'm not arguing that we shouldn't build high speed rail and try to shift more travel to trains instead of aviation either to be clear. I love trains and I especially love Shinkansen style trains, but aviation still has a big edge in big parts of the world and on some journey lengths.
I'd like to see an attempt at modern air cruises on giant zeppelins.
Then the plane takes longer than the train!
A price I’m more than willing to pay to for my Final Fantasy IX airship
Exactly what I had in mind
Yeah this would be more making the airship part of the experience rather than a means to an end.
For short trips. Most plane trips are at a distance where there isn't a viable alternative. Sure there are some nice trains that can handle the more common trips, but airplanes really shine for much longer trips.
And planes go to more places than trains do. You want to add a new destination? Go through a few years of planning and construction for a couple thousand feet of tarmac, and people can go there using existing planes. Best of all, you don't need a large passenger base to justify the expense.
For rail? You're looking at an order of magnitude more for planning and construction, all new infrastructure, all new rail stock. It will take a much larger passenger base to justify the expense and effort.
Airplanes don't just shine for longer trips. There have been some interesting developments with commuter airplanes that are either all electric or hybrid with a 200-plus-mile range. If they are as energy efficient as they promise to be, we could see a resurgence in municipal airports for transportation between regional centers where rail is either unavailable or excessively expensive.
Depends on where you're flying to and from in Asia, and how far.
Here is a good list of 'fuel per seat (in mpg)' numbers for various airplane configurations and flight durations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_economy_in_aircraft#Examp...
The total average across the industry in 2018 was between 67 and 81 mpg. Modern planes are in the 100-120mpg range.
The issue is that we are enabling people to travel long distances too cheaply.
Yes, let's make things more expensive, cause we experts know best. That poor guy that needs to attend a family funeral, he's a loser that should stay home. Inflation for the Win!
What about short distances? Why is it cheaper to fly Berlin-Stuttgart than to take a train? it makes absoutely no sense.
and according to the article the last record was 200k planes per day on june 29 2025, while july 23rd had more than 280k - so while efficiency may be going up (how many of those 280k planes are in the modern 100-120mpg range?) total flights are as well. Result: total emissions are steadily increasing.
I think the way airline tickets are priced is a big factor, and needs to change.
It is often cheaper to take a connecting flight to an airport and flying from there than to start from that airport. That disincentivises taking a low-carbon-emission train to the airport and experiencing more of (and spending more in) the city near the airport than just its airport.
Often, for longer flights, the more stops, the cheaper the total ticket gets. Planes consume more fuel at take-off and landing, making the the carbon footprint increase with these cheaper tickets. And the more you fly, the more points you get that could pay for more flights.
It should be the other way around: air-travel carbon tax should be progressive. You should pay more each time if you fly more often. That would reduce the number of flights in total while still allowing everyone to take that "trip of a life-time".
It’s 2.5-3% of all global emissions.
People who complain about aviation do more harm than good.
We would accomplish more by closing a few coal power plants and replacing them with renewables or nuclear. And no one would even notice.
Can you believe it’s almost 2030 and we still haven’t reached peak coal.
Even hot air balloons burn fuel....How do you propose we cross great distances: horse, sailboat, or walk?
We're screwed and powerless so activate ostrich mode is one way to deal with things, at least on a personal level. Probably better for your health
I guess if you are really serious about saving the planet from airplanes, you could start a network of similar-feeling folks and begin randomly bombing enough flights to terrify the world into not flying.
Give yourself an edgy name, like the Children of Kali, to make it stick.
Honestly, if you think the stakes are that high then you implicate yourself with anything but fully committed action. Anything less, and you just seem preachy and screechy.
PS: It's a book called The Ministry of the Future. Try reading once in a while. Whoosh.
I recently read Days of Rage about the various groups committing political violence during the 60s and 70s. Weatherman, Black Panthers, Black Liberation Army, etc.
I don't know if there was really a 'message' more than just reporting what 'happened'. But, I have to say I came away with the idea that that kind of political violence is futile. Non-violent political action seemed to have MUCH more beneficial action than any bomb. (of course it wasn't as clear-cut between non-violent groups and revolutionary groups at the time)
Maybe thats only because I just read the ONE book.
The general impression from talking to people who live then (I was a baby in the 1970s so I knew/know a fair number). The violent groups were looked on as weird or kids who needed to grow up - they were ignored for the most part other than cheering on what the police did.
There is a reason Rosa Parks was chosen to start the bus boycott - she comes off as "just like me" to the average person. Thus when she couldn't take it anymore the rest of America didn't write her off.
That is a terrible way to get the necessary support for climate action and would be actively harmful to the cause.
This argument has been made so often and in so much detail that I’m surprised to still see people suggest climate terrorism in, presumably, good faith.
Modern aviation is an amazing engineering feat (all the environmental issues aside). With such numbers it means that "one in a million" failure occurs roughly evey week, but the fact that we have so little major incidents demonstrates how well aicrafts are engineered.
With numbers like that I guess they have no reason to make flights more comfortable or convenient. I just did a cross country flight and back 2 weeks ago and I'm still recovering from it. I really hate flying now.
The real cost of air travel continues to go down as customers really only discriminate on price. Airlines have tried before to compete on other facets but everything failed.
The best you can do is look at specific carriers, and more importantly specifically what aircraft you'll be flying on.
A cross country flight in economy is going to be more comfortable in a Delta A220 than a United 737 Max. However, because of hubs and lack of competition many non-mega metros don't really have a large amount of choice.
Maybe, I don't know. Sprit Airlines closing up abruptly like it did may refute your premise. They were the cheapest of the cheap, people hated them and now they are gone.
As the country exited COVID, mainline carriers began to really push their basic and barebones fares which directly took away business from ULCCs like Spirit. Spirit never really leveraged their credit cards effectively to help subsidize the cost of seats.
ULCCs thrive when they can maximize their time in the sky across as many different flights as possible. Filling up the day with many different flights allows them to rake in checked-baggage fees, reserved seat fees etc more often than longer mainline carrier flights. All of this went out the window when a large portion of their A320 fleet was grounded because of the P&W engine issues. This absolutely killed their utilization percentage.
Spirit died way more because of business management than it did because customers didn't choose on price.
> With numbers like that I guess they have no reason to make flights more comfortable or convenient. I just did a cross country flight and back 2 weeks ago and I'm still recovering from it. I really hate flying now.
My expectations are low and yet airlines somehow manage to fail. I made the mistake of booking a flight with frontier and they "delayed" the flight several times before eventually canceling the whole flight.
All airlines do this. It’s frustrating, and it has to do with playing the game with the DOT. They are punished for cancelling flights, but not delaying them, so the game is to delay rather than cancel until there is truly no option but to cancel. It’s an area of regulation that needs more work.
I am a current airline pilot, and I end up flying on all of them in order to get to and from work. Trust me, they all do this. The impact to you may be less if it’s an airline with more flights, because that airline has more options to recover and fix your experience, but they all do it.
I was up in the air flying that day.
It didn't seem busy at all. Everything was on time, quick, and smooth on both sides. My partner and I commented on how smooth everything went.
The new Airbus Project Sunrise aircraft also set the record for longest passenger aircraft flight
Just looked that up. Good lord, they need to amend the universal declaration of human rights to include flying people 24 hours straight in coach as a violation.
It will surely be a tough sell. It will be very expensive (comparatively), and most travelers won't even want to do it. There's a reason Ethiad is so successful on these kinds of flights because their hub creates a natural stopping point halfway.
This seems like madness to me. A fully loaded 747 has around 140,000 litres of energy-dense jet fuel containing between 2.2 and 2.9 GWh worth of energy - or around two hours output of a typical power station.
This level of profligacy is simply not sustainable.
Optimization for this problem looks like making it so people and items do not need fast transportation, but I don't see that happening any time soon.
Parkinson's Law needs a moderator in the form of agreed-upon limits. How we get there, I have no idea, but it's well-overdue.
Yes, we need to shut down the power plants. People lived without electricity for millions of years, they can always get back to it. /s
To summarize, this is the equivalent of someone putting their fingers in their ear and going, "lalalalalala I'm not listening" while someone tells them to stop being a consumption monster.
To me, the parent's statement was a comment on the enormity of aircraft fuel used.
not really the same thing