3QUESTION 3 OF 3
Answer & explanation
The official answer, with Fermi’s reasoning step by step.
Answer & explanation
Official answer
750,000
flight attendants
How to estimate it
Fermi’s official “Napkin math”
There are around 25,000 airliners in the world. One plane flies from morning to night, so it needs a few crews to cover the day, plus people on rest days, on reserve and in training. How many attendants does that take per plane? Call it 25.
- Airliners in the world
- ≈ 25,000
- Flight attendants per plane
- × 25
- 25,000 × 25
- ≈ 625,000
Rounded assumptions may give a slightly different estimate. The official answer above is the game’s reference value.
Source calculation & reference
- World air passengers, 2025 (IATA)
- ≈ 5.0 billion
- US air passengers, 2025 (BTS)
- 890 million
- US flight attendants, 2025 (BLS)
- 133,700
- 133,700 × 5.0 ÷ 0.89
- ≈ 750,000 flight attendants
Reference cited by Fermi: US Bureau of Labor Statistics count scaled by IATA and BTS passenger totals; no body publishes a worldwide figure
How close was your guess?
Your comparison will appear here.
Compare by ratio: divide the larger number by the smaller one. The closer to 1×, the better.