Misc
Visualizing Well-Known Airlines by Fleet Composition
Visualizing Well-Known Airlines by Fleet Composition
How many airplanes do the world’s major airlines utilize in their fleets, and which models do they prefer?
Some prefer newer planes, such as the Boeing 787 Dreamliner which came into service in the 2010s. Others prefer large planes, like the Airbus A380 , the world’s largest passenger aircraft. A few carriers, like Air France–KLM, opt for variety. The airline uses 16 different active models. This contrasts with Southwest Airlines, which utilizes a single model in its fleet.
This series of graphics visualizes some of the world’s most well-known airliners by fleet composition, using fleet data from Planespotters.net as of May 26, 2022.
How Many Planes Are in Airline Fleets?
Each plane in a fleet is tracked in meticulous detail, from its start of service date and age, to its registration number and current status.
Above we visualized the parent airline’s current fleets, which includes planes that are either in service or parked for future service. They do not include retired planes (the historic fleet) or future planes on order.
From conglomerates to flag carriers, here are some of the world’s most well-known airline fleets:
U.S. based airlines were far and away the largest aircraft carriers, with American Airlines being the world’s largest airline by fleet size since 2019. Interestingly, Delta Airlines was the largest by revenue in 2020, despite a smaller fleet size.
Asia’s largest airline has been China Southern, in both fleet size, revenue, and passengers carried. Together with China Eastern and the flag carrier Air China, it is part of China’s “Big Three” airlines.
But smaller airlines aren’t any less important, or lucrative. The slightly smaller fleet size of International Airlines Group (IAG), which was formed from a merger between flag carriers British Airways and Iberia, includes planes that fly on the world’s highest grossing routes. They’re joined on the list by other smaller fleets including UAE airliner Emirates, Singapore Airlines (often ranked as the world’s best airline), and Air Canada.
Boeing, Airbus, and Other Aircraft Manufacturers
The story of airline fleets usually breaks down to the world’s largest aircraft manufacturers, Europe’s Airbus and America’s Boeing.
By outlasting key competitors and mergers in a difficult industry, the duopoly has solidified a grasp on the commercial aircraft sector. In 2019, they were estimated to control a combined 91% of the global commercial aircraft market.
Which manufacturers do the world’s popular airlines utilize? Here’s a breakdown of the same airlines from above, this time by manufacturer share:
Share of Airline Fleets by Manufacturer (Oct 2021) | Airbus | Boeing | Other |
---|---|---|---|
Lufthansa | 86.7% | 9.5% | 3.9% |
IAG | 72.6% | 14.8% | 12.7% |
China Eastern | 71.1% | 28.9% | 0.0% |
Turkish Airlines | 57.2% | 42.8% | 0.0% |
China Southern | 56.7% | 42.2% | 1.1% |
Singapore Airlines | 51.7% | 48.3% | 0.0% |
American Airlines | 49.8% | 50.2% | 0.0% |
Emirates | 45.7% | 54.3% | 0.0% |
Delta | 43.8% | 56.2% | 0.0% |
Air Canada | 43.3% | 56.7% | 0.0% |
Air France–KLM | 28.5% | 51.7% | 19.8% |
United Airlines | 22.8% | 77.2% | 0.0% |
All Nippon Airways (ANA) | 18.7% | 81.3% | 0.0% |
Southwest Airlines | 0.0% | 100.0% | 0.0% |
Notably, European and Asian airlines have emerged as slightly bigger Airbus customers, while American carriers favor Boeing. There are also standouts, such as Southwest Airlines’ utilization of just one make, the Boeing 737.
And a few carriers used aircraft from other manufacturers as well. Brazil’s Embraer saw usage in IAG and Air France–KLM, making up 17% of the latter’s total fleet. Bombardier‘s CJR planes, formerly produced by the Canadian manufacturer but now owned by the Mitsubishi Aircraft Corporation, saw use by IAG, Air France–KLM, and Lufthansa. The Airbus A220 was also originally a Bombardier plane before being acquired by the European manufacturer in 2018.
China Southern Airlines was the only other airline to feature a different manufacturer’s plane in its active fleet, the ARJ21. Also known as the Xiangfeng (literally “soaring phoenix”), it was developed by Chinese state-owned manufacturer Comac and first introduced into service in 2016.
What Will Airlines Use in the Future?
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, Airbus was starting to outperform Boeing in market share.
In 2019, the worldwide grounding of the Boeing 737 MAX model after two crashes saw 387 active aircraft grounded and 1,200 canceled orders, a debacle that could go down as the most costly corporate blunder in history.
Soon after, Airbus took the global market share lead in new orders, with the Airbus A320 becoming the world’s highest selling family of aircraft in October 2019. But the COVID-19 pandemic quickly followed and severely impacted the entire aviation industry.
As countries, airliners, and manufacturers look to bounce back and recover, fleet compositions are sure to change in coming years.
Misc
Visualizing Two Decades of Reported Hate Crimes in the U.S.
Hate crimes across the U.S. have been on the rise since 2014. Here’s a look at the most common types of offenses over the years.

Visualizing Two Decades of Reported Hate Crimes in the U.S.
Across the U.S., thousands of hate crimes are committed each year, with many different motivating biases.
In 2020 alone, more than 10,000 unique hate crime incidents were reported to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)—and it’s likely that thousands more were committed that didn’t get reported to law enforcement.
What are the most commonly reported motivating biases, and how have hate crime rates evolved over the years? This graphic uses data from the FBI to visualize two decades of reported hate crime incidents across America.
What is Considered a Hate Crime?
Before diving in, it’s important to determine what constitutes a hate crime.
According to the U.S. Department of Justice, a hate crime is a crime that’s “committed on the basis of the victim’s perceived or actual race, color, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, or disability.”
These types of crimes are a threat to society, as they have a broader impact on communities than other types of crimes do. This is because hate crimes can foster fear and intimidate large groups of people or marginalized communities, making them feel unwelcome, unsafe, or othered.
Hate Crimes on the Rise
Hate crimes have been rising across the U.S. in nearly every year since 2014. By 2020, reported crimes across America reached record-level highs not seen in over two decades.
Year | Number of Reported Incidents | % Change (y-o-y) |
---|---|---|
2001 | 9730 | 18.4% |
2002 | 7485 | -23.1% |
2003 | 7545 | 0.8% |
2004 | 7685 | 1.9% |
2005 | 7411 | -3.6% |
2006 | 7715 | 4.1% |
2007 | 7625 | -1.2% |
2008 | 8039 | 5.4% |
2009 | 6613 | -17.7% |
2010 | 6633 | 0.3% |
2011 | 6299 | -5.0% |
2012 | 6594 | 4.7% |
2013 | 6044 | -8.3% |
2014 | 5599 | -7.4% |
2015 | 5871 | 4.9% |
2016 | 6276 | 6.9% |
2017 | 7321 | 16.7% |
2018 | 7170 | -2.1% |
2019 | 7892 | 10.1% |
2020 | 10299 | 30.5% |
And sadly, these figures are likely a vast undercount. Law enforcement submit this data to the FBI of their own volition, and in 2020, thousands of agencies did not submit their crime statistics.
Race-Related Hate Crimes are Most Common
Historically, the most reported hate crimes in the U.S. are related to race. In 2020, about 66% of incidents were motivated by discrimination against the victim’s race or ethnicity.
Type of Bias | Total Number of Crimes (2020) | % of Total |
---|---|---|
Race/Ethnicity | 6793 | 66.0% |
Religion | 1626 | 15.8% |
Sexual Orientation | 1311 | 12.7% |
Other | 569 | 5.5% |
Total | 10299 | -- |
While race is the most commonly reported hate crime, incidents related to gender and gender identity are on the rise—in 2020, there was a 9% increase in gender-related incidents, and a 34% increase in gender identity-related incidents, compared to 2019 figures.
Science
Visualizing the Relationship Between Cancer and Lifespan
New research links mutation rates and lifespan. We visualize the data supporting this new framework for understanding cancer.

A Newfound Link Between Cancer and Aging?
A new study in 2022 reveals a thought-provoking relationship between how long animals live and how quickly their genetic codes mutate.
Cancer is a product of time and mutations, and so researchers investigated its onset and impact within 16 unique mammals. A new perspective on DNA mutation broadens our understanding of aging and cancer development—and how we might be able to control it.
Mutations, Aging, and Cancer: A Primer
Cancer is the uncontrolled growth of cells. It is not a pathogen that infects the body, but a normal body process gone wrong.
Cells divide and multiply in our bodies all the time. Sometimes, during DNA replication, tiny mistakes (called mutations) appear randomly within the genetic code. Our bodies have mechanisms to correct these errors, and for much of our youth we remain strong and healthy as a result of these corrective measures.
However, these protections weaken as we age. Developing cancer becomes more likely as mutations slip past our defenses and continue to multiply. The longer we live, the more mutations we carry, and the likelihood of them manifesting into cancer increases.
A Biological Conundrum
Since mutations can occur randomly, biologists expect larger lifeforms (those with more cells) to have greater chances of developing cancer than smaller lifeforms.
Strangely, no association exists.
It is one of biology’s biggest mysteries as to why massive creatures like whales or elephants rarely seem to experience cancer. This is called Peto’s Paradox. Even stranger: some smaller creatures, like the naked mole rat, are completely resistant to cancer.
This phenomenon motivates researchers to look into the genetics of naked mole rats and whales. And while we’ve discovered that special genetic bonuses (like extra tumor-suppressing genes) benefit these creatures, a pattern for cancer rates across all other species is still poorly understood.
Cancer May Be Closely Associated with Lifespan
Researchers at the Wellcome Sanger Institute report the first study to look at how mutation rates compare with animal lifespans.
Mutation rates are simply the speed at which species beget mutations. Mammals with shorter lifespans have average mutation rates that are very fast. A mouse undergoes nearly 800 mutations in each of its four short years on Earth. Mammals with longer lifespans have average mutation rates that are much slower. In humans (average lifespan of roughly 84 years), it comes to fewer than 50 mutations per year.
The study also compares the number of mutations at time of death with other traits, like body mass and lifespan. For example, a giraffe has roughly 40,000 times more cells than a mouse. Or a human lives 90 times longer than a mouse. What surprised researchers was that the number of mutations at time of death differed only by a factor of three.
Such small differentiation suggests there may be a total number of mutations a species can collect before it dies. Since the mammals reached this number at different speeds, finding ways to control the rate of mutations may help stall cancer development, set back aging, and prolong life.
The Future of Cancer Research
The findings in this study ignite new questions for understanding cancer.
Confirming that mutation rate and lifespan are strongly correlated needs comparison to lifeforms beyond mammals, like fishes, birds, and even plants.
It will also be necessary to understand what factors control mutation rates. The answer to this likely lies within the complexities of DNA. Geneticists and oncologists are continuing to investigate genetic curiosities like tumor-suppressing genes and how they might impact mutation rates.
Aging is likely to be a confluence of many issues, like epigenetic changes or telomere shortening, but if mutations are involved then there may be hopes of slowing genetic damage—or even reversing it.
While just a first step, linking mutation rates to lifespan is a reframing of our understanding of cancer development, and it may open doors to new strategies and therapies for treating cancer or taming the number of health-related concerns that come with aging.
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