Last Thursday Was the Busiest Day of Commercial Air Traffic in History

July 23, 2026, was the busiest day for commercial air travel ever, according to data from @flightradar24.

A whopping 153,359 commercial flights were tracked worldwide. pic.twitter.com/0fJ9mcjZkY

— Colin McCarthy (@US_Stormwatch) July 25, 2026

With the instability of international oil markets due to the war in the Persian Gulf and what the International Air Travel Association (IATA) describes as decreased customer demand, one might expect that commercial air travel would be limited. But people nonetheless flew in record numbers, breaking a previous record set in 2023 by 14,122 flights.

These figures, of course, do not include non-commercial air travel, such as military flights.

-via John Konrad