What Is The World’s Busiest Airport?
There’s something about cruising up to the Jet Blue terminal on the very Disney-like monorail that is the AirTrain at JFK Airport here in New York that makes you feel like you were leaving one city and entering another. A very busy city, at that. Which made me wonder: What is the world’s busiest airport?
I admit I’ve been a little wonkish lately (perhaps as a result of not being on a recent enough trip), but I have to admit, this question came to me naturally (unlike, say, some recent forays into the number of Swedes that visit Thailand, or the number of Alabamians with passports). So here it goes.
The Airports Council International (“ACI”) just reported their numbers for air passenger traffic for 2009. Overall, the number of flyers worldwide actually declined by 2.7% to 4.4 billion, and the number of aircraft movements (takeoff and landings) were down 5.5% to 63.9 million.
And the busiest airport? Topping the list at #1 was Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport with 87,993,451 passengers, followed by London Heathrow Airport at 66,037,578. Rising to #3 in 2009 was Beijing Capital International Airport with 65,329,851 passengers, followed by last year’s third place, Chicago O’Hare International Airport at 64,397,891.
Here’s the list of the top 30 (in passengers):
1
ATLANTA GA, US
87,993,451
2
LONDON, GB
66,037,578
3
BEIJING, CN
65,329,851
4
CHICAGO IL, US
64,397,891
5
TOKYO, JP
61,903,656
6
PARIS, FR
57,884,954
7
LOS ANGELES CA, US
56,518,605
8
DALLAS/FORT WORTH TX, US
56,030,457
9
FRANKFURT, DE
50,932,840
10
DENVER CO, US
50,167,485
11
MADRID, ES
48,248,890
12
NEW YORK NY, US
45,912,430
13
HONG KONG, HK
45,560,888
14
AMSTERDAM, NL
43,569,553
15
DUBAI, AE
40,901,752
16
BANGKOK, TH
40,500,269
17
LAS VEGAS NV, US
40,460,310
18
HOUSTON TX, US
39,993,236
19
PHOENIX AZ, US
37,824,982
20
SAN FRANCISCO CA, US
37,366,287
21
SINGAPORE, SG
37,203,978
22
GUANGZHOU, CN
37,048,550
23
JAKARTA, ID
36,466,823
24
CHARLOTTE NC, US
34,577,808
25
MIAMI FL, US
33,886,025
26
ORLANDO FL, US
33,731,431
27
ROME, IT
33,723,213
28
SYDNEY, AU
33,444,687
29
NEWARK NJ, US
33,400,626
30
MUNICH, DE
32,681,067
ACI’s report can be found here (.pdf fomat).