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How many people can an airplane carry? Depends on the aircraft. Some planes such as the 787 and 320 can carry up too 250 passengers, While an Embraer 145 can only hold about 25-45.
Again using round figures, there are twice as many flights and three times as many people traveling, compared to the 1970s. To be specific, in 1978 the US airlines carried 275 million passengers. In 2009, they carried 770 million passengers. In 1969 there were 5.4 million flights, in 2009, there were 10.1 million.