The narcissistic, wealthy elite kids who’ve traveled to every country in the world – or at least most of them – are now having second thoughts about their self-centered behaviors: More and more travelers are visiting every country in the world. Some are having second thoughts about it | CNN
Now that they’ve done it, they suggest you might be able to travel too but only if you travel slowly and avoid flying. Of course.
This privileged guy had the luxury of taking 10 years to travel the world – and avoid air travel – for no other purpose than to boast about it:
Traveling to every country without flying is certainly possible, for those who have the time, money and stamina at least, as proved by Torbjørn “Thor” Pedersen who set off from Denmark to do just that back in 2013.
I do not understand the desire to visit every country, which for most is frequently for less than a day, so they can boast of their wealth and pretty privilege accomplishment with selfies posted on Instagram.
The CNN story cites an unsourced quote that 10% of the world’s population has flown in an airplane.
Over 80% of the U.S. population has flown in an aircraft. Outside of the U.S., the statistics are generally not known. About half of Chinese citizens living in major cities have flown (How Much of the World’s Population Has Flown in an Airplane? | Air & Space Magazine| Smithsonian Magazine)
One survey says about 10-11% of the total world’s population has traveled by air in the preceding 12 months. Another estimate is 2-4% flew in the prior year (The global scale, distribution and growth of aviation: Implications for climate change – ScienceDirect). The IATA estimates 62% of the world’s population traveled by air in 2019 but that estimate is bogus because it counts each passenger as one flight, yet each passenger may have made multiple flights.
A SWAG is the estimated 10-11% traveled by air in the preceding 12 months is a good guess and the percent of the global population that has traveled by air is more than that – how much is unknown. Pick a percentage – 20, 25, 30%?
Surprisingly, no one has a reliable estimate.