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Top Ten Airport facts and stats

Staring out of the window onto the runway at the airport, watching all the crazy looking vehicles unload and load planes, but have you ever thought just how busy it is and what goes on behind the scenes.

Consider these top ten stats and facts about life in a modern airport:

1.  Heathrow airport sells more than 26,000 cups of tea, 35,000 cups of coffee and 1,050 bottles of champagne every day!! More than 974 tons of chips are sold at the airport every year (source Heathrow airport).

2.  Breakfast is the most popular meal of the day at Heathrow with almost five million eggs, 6.4million croissants and 4.5million rashers of bacon served every year. The number of pastries sold annually would line a runway in both directions 350 times.

3.  Heathrow Terminal 5 has 30 miles of baggage conveyors, 2.8 miles of tunnels and 44 baggage reclaim belts. Around 53 million pieces of luggage are processed every year.

4.  In any one day there are approximately 100,000 flights worldwide carrying around 8 million people.  In 2014 3.3 billion people travelled by plane, which is around 44% of the world’s population (source IATA).    Every day at Heathrow 1,400 flights take off and land – one every 45 seconds.

5.  It takes under two hours to prepare a Boeing 777 with 66 tons of fuel, five tons of catering supplies, 3.6 tons of luggage and 23 tons of mail and cargo.

6.  The air traffic control tower at Thailand’s New Bangkok International Airport is 434 feet and is the tallest air traffic control tower in the world.

7.  Singapore’s Changi Airport has a nature trail and a butterfly garden with over 1000 butterflies.

8.  The Hong Kong International Airport has a nine-hole USGA-approved golf course next to Terminal 2 upon which passengers can play.  Pack your clubs 🙂

9.  The white lines in the sky left behind a plane are made of water vapour.  You can guess the weather by looking at these.  A thin, short lasting line indicates fair weather.  A thicker longer line could be early signs of a storm.

10.  This is not a fact or a stat, but a lovely quote from an airport photographer who said air traffic control towers are the choreographers of the airport, conducting the complex dance of the airport.