The chart above shows the number of passengers that traveled by air for every square mile in each US region. The Northeast has almost twice as many air passengers per square mile than the next leading region.
Findings
- The difference between the region with the greatest number of air travelers per area, the Northeast, and the region with the least, the West, is 545.19 per square mile.
- The Northeast has 4.79 times the number of air travelers per area that the West does.
Caveats
- Travel data is from 2017.
- Area data is from 2010.
- All figures are rounded to the nearest hundredth.
- The Northeastern US consists of New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Maryland, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Delaware, Maine, Rhode Island, and Vermont.
- The Southern US consists of Texas, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee, Louisiana, South Carolina, Alabama, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Mississippi, and West Virginia.
- The Midwestern US consists of Illinois, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Missouri, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota.
- The Western US consists of California, Washington, Colorado, Arizona, Oregon, Utah, Nevada, New Mexico, Hawaii, Idaho, Alaska, Montana, and Wyoming.
Details
Although the South has the most air travelers by far, it ranks second when population is taken into account, and second in this metric. The leader in the per capita metric, the West, ranks second in overall air passengers, and last in this metric. The Northeast, which in this metric is first, ranks third in both overall air passengers and air passengers per capita.
The Midwest leads in none of the metrics and comes in last in overall air passengers and air passengers per capita. It does however, squeak by the West in this metric to rank third.
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.