On Sunday 3 February 2019, the 53rd Super Bowl will take place in Atlanta, Georgia. The Super Bowl is one of the biggest sporting events in the world and is the culmination of the National Football Confederation and the American Football Championship – the two leagues in American Football. The winners of each championship come together at the Super Bowl to see who will be crowned the ultimate winners for that year. This year those teams are the New England Patriots and the L.A. Rams.
Below are some facts about this year’s Super Bowl, with an aerospace twist:
- The Mercedes-Benz Superdome in Atlanta, Georgia holds 74,295 people, that’s over 85 A380s needed if all of the spectators were to fly to the game.
- Nearly 104 million people travelled through Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International airport in 2017, making it the busiest airport by passenger traffic in the world.
- 150,000 people will be flying into the airport for this year’s Super Bowl alone. Despite the stadium only holding 74,295 people, it is thought that almost double that will travel to the city for events around the game.
- When the Rams last faced the Patriots in the Super Bowl in 2001 they were based in St Louis rather than L.A.; St Louis is home to offices for a couple of our member companies including GKN and Lockheed Martin. Boeing also have offices there, who are supported by UK companies in their supply chain.
- New England is also home to offices of ADS members including BAE Systems, Cobham, UTC, Raytheon and Senior Aerospace.
- An American Football field is just bigger than the length of three Airbus A220s at 360 feet.
- In 2017 the New England Patriots became the first team in American Football history to get a private team plane, a customised Boeing 767 known as AirKraft.