There’s a trending category of short videos online (“reels”, “TikToks”, etc. example) that have covered the topic of falling in love and running away with someone random that you find attractive at the airport. They continue to show up in my feed, so either this idea is actually popular or the algorithm has me labeled as a “high risk” individual for falling in love at the airport. The 1.6M likes on the linked video indicate that perhaps I’m not alone in this fait accompli that is the social media algorithm.

For the purpose of this entry, we’ll be going through some simple stats to determine “is this idea even possible?” and “what is the best strategy?” of such an endeavor. As always, this is purely for fun and not something I ever plan on doing. But, I feel obligated to explore such things for my own entertainment.

In 2024 as I’m writing this, for my generation at least, the thought of approaching someone other than for something extremely basic at an airport seems absurd. Perhaps to ask “is someone sitting there?” or the simple “are you waiting for flight XYZ?” However, if we want to meet the romantic partner of our dreams, this will need to be overcome. For something like this — a slow roll won’t work. You’ll need to be upfront and dive right into it with the full on dose of crazy that is about to unfold. “Hey there! You caught my eye as I was passing by — this is extremely crazy, but would you consider cancelling your plans and joining me on an adventure somewhere random?”. Obviously, this is going to have a very low rate of success, so speed is the key here. Get to the point and move on if it doesn’t work, there are only so many people that you’d fall in love with after all and only so many planes able to accommodate last minute flight changes. But is this actually the most optimal route? Let’s think through this a bit more.

My thesis in this scenario is that the vast majority of people at the airport don’t have plans they’re willing to just cancel and adjust for some random guy asking unhinged requests of them (shocking, I know). From the below, it appears my thesis is correct.

According to an article by statista.com 50% of individuals travel for leisure purposes, 29% travel for business, and 21% of travelers are doing so for personal non-leisure reasons, such as traveling to and from college, family events, funerals, or for medical purposes. This presents an interesting lens to approach maximizing the likelihood of success. Which of these reasons are likely to be put to the side for this crazy man named Will?

Well — the angle I’ve come up with is that we will have to “top” their existing trip for personal leisure purposes, likely via an international trip. This enters our reckless adventure into the category of personal leisure, which aligns with the largest reasons people travel, increasing our chances of success. We’ll need to pick an airport with a lot of domestic and international flights, so we’ll go with JFK. There’s a total of 62.4 million passengers per year coming through JFK so we’ll go with that from here. (Stats via Port Authority of NJ/NY). That’s 170,000 people per day! Furthering this, 57.1% of travelers are women according to zippia.com (link). So that means there’s a whooping 97,070 women on any given day going through JFK. Well, for the purposes of this thought exercise, we’ll focus on someone from the generation that may or may not use short videos for entertainment, so that rules out 84% of travels according to AAA here as they are over the age of 40. Putting this all together, of the ~97,000 women, only about 8%, or 7,760 total women would fit the criteria to even be approached on a given day when accounting for all of the above factors. This is split across 6 terminals so realistically, you’re looking at 1,300 at any given terminal throughout the day.

Where do we go from here? You’d want to start out as early as TSA opens until the last flight. TSA opens at 4AM and goes until roughly midnight. So that leaves a whooping 20 hours to achieve this, but that’s not realistic, you’d need to book the flight, get to the gate, board the plane, and convince your equally as passionate partner to join you. So at most, you’re looking at closer to 18 hours. That’s roughly 72 people per hour you’d need to ask to cover 100% of women in the terminal. Not really achievable, so we’ll need to cut down the pool even further to further optimize your odds of success.

Of the flights, there are 322 US destinations and 295 routes to international destinations (americanairportguides.com link). So roughly 47% of passengers are already flying international and likely wouldn’t go through the hassle of rebooking a trip to accommodate your delusions and also likely wouldn’t have their trip “topped” by rebooking to go somewhere else international on a whim. That means our unicorn is down to just 38 people per hour. Not quite there just yet. We’re getting closer. A similar percentage 52% (Apollo Academy link) of people flying domestic won’t have a passport so that limits this to about 18 women per hour (or 324 per day) that would have a passport (hopefully with their belongings), are traveling domestically, and could potentially build up the courage to adjust their schedule in such an extreme manner.

To my earlier question — is bluntly going to every woman and asking them to go on a crazy trip the most optimal route for this? I don’t think so. I believe there’s a better strategy. Instantly assume that any person at a domestic gate in your terminal is someone that might be willing to consider such a crazy idea, second, eliminate people roughly based on age, third have a list of international flights prepared that depart no less than an hour later than the conversation you’re about to have, then approach the person and ask about if they ever got the RealID required to fly domestically. This is a non-confrontational topic and an easy way to pivot to “oh so you fly with your passport everywhere?”. If the answer is yes, you’re off to the races. Hopefully the two of you lovebirds hit it off and the list of flights remaining for that day are acceptable for your life of love together!

So what is the takeaway from all of this? Well, if you truly are feeling the love connection of a lifetime and you cannot help yourself and must approach the person you see; there’s at least some basic stats here to present to you a way to filter out if this idea of yours is likely to work. Or, if it is more like it has been described many times in this entry, crazy.

All of that being said, this does not account for the human in any of this. There is no way to quantify or estimate what happens in this scenario in the real world. I do not condone bothering people in public spaces that don’t generally welcome people approaching them.