How many commercial/passenger planes have you seen at one time at night? Here in Louisville w/ the UPS World Hub I've seen 18. I can see them coming in from nearly every direction hitting an outer marker and then coming in 2 by 2. How about you?
Wow, cool question. I'll bet your number is going to be hard to beat. Perhaps only by Memphis at Fedex's hub. DFW is my local airport and I've never counted, but I've probably seen up to 10 or so lined up for landing on the dual main runways.
I don't think that I can equal previous post in numbers of civilian aircraft but I have seen a string coming in from the east as far as I could see on final for PDX. BUT at Hondo in 1944 at night we could see too many to count coming into a race track pattern to land at 1200 hours. The black skies were almost instantly filled with red and green lights of returning training aircraft fighting for position in the circuit. One by one they peeled off to land and we were busy for the next 4 hours getting them serviced and put to bed. Then at 0800 it started all over again.
At times at ATL, as busy at it is, when taxiing in after landing, one can often see two long strings of lights headed for the two main arrival runways.
Atlanta has four runways in operation ( frequently acknowleded the busiest in the world )... on a clear night or morning in winter ( when it's still dark during peak arrival / departure times ) when there is visual separation it would be real easy to beat the count of 18 aiircraft. They start their arrival ques 70-80 miles out. In addition Atlanta has two very busy general aviation airports and several lesser airports. At a distance most aircraft are lighted in similar fashion making them indingusiable between large and small. The controllers in Hampton have their hands full. One is a friend, I'll try to remember to ask how many aircraft they work during peak times.
I love landing at LAX at night......when you enter the pattern you normally can see half a dozen jets in front of you following the track for final.
Reminds me of this FedEx radar video.... http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6886880938991195179#
