FAA Facts

Scott Sherer

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Facts about the FAA and Air Traffic Control

This holiday season is forecast to be the busiest travel period ever with passengers crossing the country in cars, trains, and planes. But did you know that every day, the FAA's Air Traffic Organization (ATO) provides service to more than 42,000 flights and 2.5 million airline passengers across more than 29 million square miles of airspace?
Some other facts about the world of air traffic:
• At any given moment there are more than 5,000 aircraft traversing the U.S. skies.
• The FAA is a year-round 24/7 operation, responsible for 5.3 million square miles of U.S. domestic airspace and 24 million square miles of U.S. airspace over the oceans.
• There are 43,290 average daily flights in and out of the U.S.
• More than 14,000 air traffic controllers manage traffic from many of the FAA’s 700 facilities.
• Fifty-five hundred airway transportation system specialists maintain more than 70,000 pieces of equipment.
• Aviation contributes $1.6 trillion annually to the U.S. economy and constitutes 5.1 percent of the gross domestic product.
• Aviation generates 10 million jobs in the U.S. annually.