This interactive map shows all airborne aircraft around the world.
Students can browse this data by airport, operator, or aircraft type.
Teaching Tips
Positives
This interactive map shows the scale of global aviation.
Additional Prerequisites
Students can zoom in and click on individual airports to see arrivals and departures.
Differentiation
Math students could analyze this data. Example questions you can use with your students include:
What percentage of global flights are in a Boeing 737?
What percentage of global flights are JetBlue and United?
Students can explore another interactive map called Airport Tracker, which shows carbon emissions from the 1,300 largest airports around the world.
Students can explore the true cost of aviation by reading this information page from the Stay Grounded Network.
Students can explore the negative effects of aviation noise pollution in this scientific article.
Scientist Notes
Air travel accounts for roughly 2% of all human-caused carbon emissions. But because planes are relatively small (when compared to the Earth), flying very high up, and land and take-off in centralized locations, it is often difficult to understand the scope of human air travel on a daily basis. This website lets students visualize the over 100,000 flights that occur daily. This resource is recommended for teaching.
Standards
Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)
ESS3: Earth and Human Activity
MS-ESS3-5 Ask questions to clarify evidence of the factors that have caused the rise in global temperatures over the past century.
College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Standards
Dimension 2: Geography
D2.Geo.7.6-8 Explain how changes in transportation and communication technology influence the spatial connections among human settlements and affect the diffusion of ideas and cultural practices.
D2.Geo.2.9-12 Use maps, satellite images, photographs, and other representations to explain relationships between the locations of places and regions and their political, cultural, and economic dynamics.
