You'll get access to over 3,000 product manager interview questions and answers
Recommended by over 100k members
Assumptions:
We are talking globally
We are talking about passenger flights and nothing else
No. of flights flying in a day will be directly proportional to the airport capacity of making the flights fly i.e.
the number of available runways
how busy is the airport and hence runway capacity
# of airports | # of runways | Frequency of take-off | Total flights per day | |
Heavy Traffic (HT) | 4 | Every 5 minutes | ||
Heavy Traffic (HT) | 2 | Every 10 minutes | ||
Intermediate Traffic | 2 | Every 15 minutes | ||
Intermediate Traffic | 1 | Every 20 minutes | ||
Low Traffic | 1 | Every 30 minutes |
Total number of airports
Airports are generally directly proportional to a country’s land mass - the bigger and developed a country is - the more airport it has. NA has phenomenal number of airports and boasts airports with most runways Chicago 8, Dallas -6 but not many airport even have 2 runways, for e.g. London Heathrow airport has only 2 runways.
To get get to the number of airports globally I will segregate the countries in three groups.
North America - (Reason for keeping NA as a separate group as it has phenomenal number of airports 5000 and hence qualifies as a standalone entity. Combining it with any other group will heavily skew the group characteristic)
50 HT airports with avg of 4 runways
50 HT airports with avg of 2 runways
400 IT airports with avg of 2 runways
1500 IT airports with avg of 1 runway
3000 LT airports with avg of 1 runway
Top 9 countries with maximum area (Russia, Canada, China, Brazil, AUstralia, India etc)
On an average a country in this group have ~200 airports each i.e. total of ~2000 airports. Breakup:
HT with 4 lanes (5%) = 100
HT with 2 lanes (15%) = 300
IT with 2 runways (20%) = 400
IT with 1 runway (20%) = 400
LT with 1 runway (40%) = 800
3. Rest of the world (190 countries) have average of ~50 airports each i.e. a total of ~10000 airports. Going by the same distribution:
HT with 4 runways (5%) = 500
HT with 2 runways (15%) = 1500
IT with 2 runways (20%) = 2000
IT with 1 runway (20%) = 2000
LT with 1 runway (40%) = 4000
Lets do the math:
# of airports | Runways | Frequency of take off | Frequency per day | Total flights per day | |
Heavy Traffic (HT) | 50+100+500 = ~ 700 | 4 | Every 5 minutes | 12*24 = 288 ~ 300 | 700*300*4 = 840,000 ~ 900,000 |
Heavy Traffic (HT) | 50+300+1500=~ 2000 | 2 | Every 10 minutes | 6*24 = 144 ~150 | 2000*150*2 = 600,000 |
Intermediate Traffic | 400+400+2000~ 3000 | 2 | Every 15 minutes | ~100 | 3000*2*100 = 600,000 |
Intermediate Traffic | 1500+400+2000 ~ 4000 | 1 | Every 20 minutes | ~75 | = 4000*1*75 = 300,000 |
Low Traffic | 3000+800+4000 ~ 8000 | 1 | Every 30 minutes | ~50 | = 400,000 |
Total flights per day = 2,800,000
Self check: This number is way off. I overestimated number of airports with 4 runways and 2 runways. This number is far far less. ALso, I think I can skip altogether 2 runways for Intermediate traffic as that would be covered in the Heavy traffic one.
The actual number is ~ 100,000 flights
Top Google interview questions
- What is your favorite product? Why?89 answers | 263k views
- How would you design a bicycle renting app for tourists?62 answers | 82.5k views
- Build a product to buy and sell antiques.54 answers | 66.8k views
- See Google PM Interview Questions
Top Estimation interview questions
- Calculate the number of queries answered by Google per second.45 answers | 78.5k views
- How do you decide how many cash registers you need for a new Walmart store?33 answers | 39.4k views
- How many dentists are there in New York?33 answers | 36.7k views
- See Estimation PM Interview Questions
Top Google interview questions
- How would you improve Google Maps?53 answers | 228k views
- A metric for a video streaming service dropped by 80%. What do you do?50 answers | 135k views
- How would you design a web search engine for children below 14 years old?36 answers | 42.9k views
- See Google PM Interview Questions
Top Estimation interview questions
- Estimate the number of Uber rides.30 answers | 51.3k views
- Estimate the number of bicycles required to start a bike sharing operation in a big city.18 answers | 15.8k views
- Estimate the number of WhatsApp chats occuring in India.14 answers | 13.3k views
- See Estimation PM Interview Questions