Air Travel in US States

Dec 14, 2018
Air Travel in US States

The map above shows the number of passengers that traveled by air in each US state.  California has a commanding lead over every other US state.

Findings

  • The difference between the state with the greatest number of air travelers, California, and the state with the least (that has commercial airports), West Virginia, is 109,927,851.
  • California has 317.84 times the number of air travelers that West Virginia does.
  • The median number of air travelers in the 50 US states is 6,667,690 and the mean is 16,954,444.

Caveats

  • Travel data is from 2017.
  • The map is presented in an Albers equal-area conic projection.
  • The choropleth classification is based on Jenks or natural breaks.

Details

Some states share airports and thus air travel may be skewed by the fact that people from one state use an airport in another.  One prime example is Delaware whose residents either use airports in Pennsylvania or Maryland bumping up the numbers for those two states.  Another is New York and New Jersey.  One of New York City's major airports is located just across the border in New Jersey significantly lowering the number of air travelers in the New York data and bumping up New Jersey's number.

The big three are California, Florida, and Texas.  Not surprisingly, they are also the three most populous states in the country, although, not in that order.

Data

StateAir Travelers
Alabama2,347,759
Alaska4,828,043
Arizona24,466,301
Arkansas1,809,424
California110,274,806
Colorado31,704,766
Connecticut3,193,316
Delaware0
Florida84,921,461
Georgia51,904,261
Hawaii17,286,142
Idaho2,174,665
Illinois50,762,841
Indiana5,224,056
Iowa1,964,027
Kansas913,222
Kentucky6,154,516
Louisiana7,180,865
Maine1,261,898
Maryland13,059,559
Massachusetts19,031,758
Michigan19,720,968
Minnesota18,783,834
Mississippi881,634
Missouri13,451,284
Montana2,003,837
Nebraska2,485,434
Nevada25,555,516
New Hampshire1,084,689
New Jersey22,487,542
New Mexico2,604,884
New York52,340,307
North Carolina30,171,605
North Dakota1,046,165
Ohio10,006,616
Oklahoma3,347,022
Oregon10,794,250
Pennsylvania20,184,800
Rhode Island1,973,324
South Carolina4,707,213
South Dakota899,061
Tennessee10,648,450
Texas81,210,633
Utah11,863,663
Vermont583,038
Virginia26,978,207
Washington25,359,329
West Virginia346,955
Wisconsin5,177,556
Wyoming560,688

Sources

Federal Aviation Authority.  2018.  "Enplanements of All Commercial Service Airports (by Rank)."  Accessed November 26, 2018.  https://www.faa.gov/airports/planning_capacity/passenger_allcargo_stats/passenger/media/cy17-commercial-service-enplanements.pdf.

Filed under: Cartography