September 20, 2010
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Harper’s Travel Index
3/09Amount an undisclosed buyer offered the Minneapolis–St. Paul airport last year for the Larry Craig bathroom stall: $5,000
1/09Total amount the Bush campaign paid Enron and Halliburton for use of corporate jets during the 2000 recount: $15,400
8/08Number of American cities where all regularly scheduled airplane service has been eliminated during the past year: 38
8/08Additional cost to U.S. airlines this year due to increases in the price of fuel: $20,000,000,000
8/08Total earnings for the U.S. airline industry in 1999, its most profitable year to date: $5,300,000,000
8/08Years that the E.U. kept a secret list of items banned from air travel, before it agreed to publish the list this year: 5
5/08Length, in miles, of Beijing’s newest airport terminal: 2
5/08Average number of passengers on Big Sky Airlines’ daily flight from Lewistown, Montana, to Billings last year: 2
Subsidy that the federal government paid the airline per flight: $770
12/08Year by which computer server farms worldwide are projected to produce more greenhouse gases than air travel: 2020
11/08Minimum number of reporters who traveled to Wasilla, Alaska, in the two weeks following Sarah Palin’s selection as VP: 90
10/08Amount of loose change recovered at U.S. airport-security checkpoints since 2005: $1,050,371.78
3/07Amount that Iran’s tourism ministry says it pays travel agents for every Westerner they bring to the country: $20
2/07Amount the Defense Department is paying North Dakota researchers to develop a biofuel for military jets: $4,800,000
11/07Number of customers who have flown the Vatican’s new “pilgrim airline” to holy sites in Europe: 890
Size, in ounces, of the bottle of holy water provided to each customer on its inaugural flight in August: 3.4
4/06Chance that a passenger on a flight of two and a half hours or longer will have a cold within a week: 1 in 5
2/06Percentage of the air-ambulance helicopters in the U.S. that have crashed since 2000: 10
1/06Chance that an airliner has dangerous levels of disease-causing pathogens in its drinking water: 1 in 7
8/05Average number of times each day that aircrafts intrude into D.C.-area restricted flight zones: 2
8/05Amount that Northwest Airlines expects to save each year by eliminating free magazines on flights: $565,000
Amount by eliminating free pretzels: $2,000,000
7/05Tons of CO2 emissions that would be replaced each year by a proposed windmill project on Long Island: 235,000
Tons produced each year by a single jumbo jet making a round-trip trans-Atlantic flight daily: 210,000
7/05Percentage of U.S. auto travel that occurs on two-lane roads: 28
Percentage of traffic fatalities that do: 52
5/05Minimum number of miles that a private jet has been flown to take U.S. terror suspects to “rendition” abroad: 302,000
Round-trips from D.C. to Tehran that this many frequent-flyer miles on American Airlines will buy: 4
12/05Miles per hour of two low-flying Danish fighter jets in February when they startled a reindeer named Rudolph to death: 450
Amount his owner, a professional Santa, was paid by the Air Force in September to buy a new Rudolph: $5,000
11/05Minimum number of infants impeded from boarding airplanes because their names were on the U.S. no-fly list: 14
10/05Number of terrorist acts that one song by the Houston-based rapper Arabic Assassin describes him committing: 4
Months he worked as a baggage screener at George Bush Intercontinental Airport before being fired in July: 6
12/04Minutes of weightlessness that Virgin Galactic passengers will experience on suborbital space flights in 2007: 5
11/04Distance in feet traveled by the winning pumpkin at Delaware’s Punkin Chunkin Competition last year: 4,434.28
Length in feet of the barrel of “The Second Amendment” pumpkin cannon from which it was shot: 150
9/03Months after the first manned flight that Wilbur Wright identified “war” as a potential use for airplanes: 22
4/03Fine levied on three Norwegians in 2001 for throwing paper airplanes at the U.S. embassy: $350
3/03Number of pygmy monkeys seized from a traveler’s pants last December by L.A. customs officials: 2
1/03Ratio of net profit earned by U.S. airlines since 1970 to federal subsidies given the industry since September 2001: 1:1
6/02Number of ecstasy tablets seized at Miami’s airport in February from an 81-year-old woman in a wheelchair: 9,931
5/02Hours for which New Orleans’s airport was partly evacuated in February over a package later found to contain gumbo: 5
2/02Last year in which there was a decrease in racial-profiling claims made against U.S. airport security: 1998
Ratio of the number of such claims made last year before September 11 to those made in all of 2000: 2:1
10/02Total amount the Bush campaign paid Enron and Halliburton for use of corporate jets during the 2000 recount: $15,400
11/01Number of years that Osama bin Laden’s half-brother owned the Houston Gulf Airport before his death in 1988: 6
Number of years since then that the airport has been owned by his estate: 13
1/01Ratio of the record distance for human space flight to the maximum distance depicted in 2001: A Space Odyssey: 1:1,642
7/00Number of full flight tests of the U.S. National Missile Defense system conducted in the program’s first seven years: 2
Number that were deemed a success: 1
Amount by which a congressional estimate of the system’s cost exceeds the Pentagon’s: $19,000,000,000
7/00Amount the U.S. proposed charging the U.N. last May to fly a battalion of peacekeepers into Sierra Leone: $17,000,000
Estimated amount it would cost to fly in a battalion via commercial airline: $6,000,000
2/00Percentage of Chechnya’s air force destroyed last September when Russia bombed a single plane: 100
12/00Number of planes crashed by the Wright brothers before their first successful flight on December 17, 1903: 1
10/00Average number of miles by which the Concorde flies closer to the sun than other passenger planes: 4.7
8/99Number of live contraband Chinese chipmunks that the Dutch government ordered KLM to shred last April: 440
10/99Ratio of the cost of building an F-22 fighter jet to that of upgrading an F-15 to twice the F-22’s effectiveness: 1,500:1
10/99Number of Vietnam-era helicopters that the U.S. donated to Mexico for drug control between 1996 and 1997: 73
Percentage of them that the U.S. agreed to take back last summer after Mexico found them defective: 100
10/99Weeks after Pakistan vowed last July to rid a disputed territory of Pakistani rebels that India downed one of its planes: 6
2/98Estimated gallons of jet fuel required to send Al Gore to Kyoto’s Global Warming Conference last December: 60,000
1/98Estimated total eastern German spending on fighter jets that NATO expansion will necessitate: $10,000,000,000
5/97Ratio of decibels emitted by an airplane jet engine to those emitted by “the Trap,” a new car alarm: 1:1
4/97Estimated number of Cobra attack helicopters privately owned by Americans: 25
12/97Number of the four bombs aboard an Air Force jet lost in the Colorado Rockies last spring that have been found: 0
11/97Factor by which the B-2 stealth-bomber’s maintenance hours have exceeded its flight hours since last year: 124
11/97Number of U.S. interceptor jets sent into Bosnian airspace in September to block “anti-NATO” broadcasts: 3
11/97Months after a Hard Rock Cafe opened in Beirut last winter that the U.S. lifted its ban on travel in Lebanon: 7
9/96Price McDonnell Douglas charged the U.S. Air Force last year for each C-17 airplane hinge delivered: $2,187
8/94Price of a nine-night “Schindler’s List” tour of Krakow, Poland, from Edgewater Travel in Chicago: $1,750
2/94Price, per flight, of co-piloting a Su-27 Russian fighter jet with a former Soviet test pilot, from MIGS etc. of Florida: $9,000
2/94Price paid at auction last December for an unused urine bag carried on the Soyuz 22 Soviet space flight: $1,035
10/94Number of transatlantic flights the Concorde can complete in the time required for Columbus’s first voyage: 448
4/93Estimated distance the average major-league home run would travel if hit on the moon, in feet: 4,200
8/91Chances that a worker anywhere in the world is employed by the travel and tourism industry: 1 in 15
4/91Average number of miles an item of food consumed in the United States travels before it is eaten: 1,200
1/91University of Colorado employees traveling to the Orange Bowl this month to handle mascot Ralphie the Buffalo: 12
8/90Amount the U.S. Air Force spent this year to study the effects of jet noise on pregnant horses: $100,000
6/90Number of trees Harper & Row will plant to replace those used to publish 2 Minutes a Day for a Greener Planet: 1,000
2/90Percentage change, since 1974, in the amount of commercial air traffic in the United States: +100
Percentage change, since 1974, in the number of commercial airports in the United States: 0
10/90Amount the Pentagon spent on each spare toilet seat cover for its C-5B cargo plane last year: $1,868.15
12/89Cost to a Pole of a commercial flight on LOT Polish Airlines from Gdansk to Warsaw, in zlotys: 5,000
10/89Airfare for a corpse on an American Airlines flight from New York City to Los Angeles, one way: $630
Airfare for a live person, round trip: $398
10/89Total number of frequent-flier miles U.S. airlines owe their passengers: 600,000,000,000
8/88Amount the U.S. Air Force will spend this year on imported-goatskin flight jackets: $5,193,000
11/88Members of Congress who have sent condolence letters to the families of the victims of the Iranian airliner crash: 6
1/88Average number of days Mario Cuomo traveled outside New York State each year from 1984 to 1986: 16
6/87Number of feet separating President Reagan from reporters as he walks from the White House to his helicopter: 50
Number of feet that separated President Carter from reporters: 2
3/87Percentage change in the average fare per mile of air travel since deregulation: +42
3/87Market value of an airline landing slot at LaGuardia Airport in New York City: $25,000
3/87Cubic feet of fresh air circulated per minute for each passenger on a commercial flight in 1976: 15
Today: 6
10/87Percentage of the U.S. passenger-airline business controlled by the top eight companies in 1978: 81
Percentage controlled by the top eight companies today: 91
Percentage change in the number of FAA inspectors since then: +2
2/86Percentage of all hostage deaths in airplane hijackings since 1968 that occurred during rescue attempts: 85
5/85Longest recorded
