The chart above shows the number of passengers that traveled by air for every square mile in each US state. New Jersey has a huge lead over every other state.
Findings
- The difference between the state with the greatest number of air travelers per area, New Jersey, and the state with the least (that has commercial airports), Wyoming, is 2,572.35 per square mile.
- New Jersey has 449.75 times the number of air travelers per area that Wyoming does.
- The median number of air passengers per square mile in the 50 US states is 149.66 and the mean 382.57.
Caveats
- Travel data is from 2017.
- Area data is from 2010.
- All figures are rounded to the nearest hundredth.
Details
California which has the most air travelers overall, ranks 15th when its population is taken into account, and tenth in this metric. The leader in the per capita metric, Hawaii, ranks 18th in overall air passengers and third in this metric.
Of the eight states with an area larger than 100,000 square miles, California leads in this metric followed by Colorado, Texas, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Montana, and Alaska.
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.
United States Census Bureau. September 2012. "United States Summary: 2010: Population and Housing Unit Counts." Accessed January 23, 2018. https://www.census.gov/prod/cen2010/cph-2-1.pdf.