There's A New Busiest Airport In The World & Many Of The Top 10 Are In North America
Travel numbers are taking off again 🛫
A woman at the airport. Right: Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport.
The world's busiest airport is once again in the United States and there's a good chance you'll have to catch a connecting flight there if you're flying Delta this summer.
Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta Airport was the most-visited airport on the planet last year, according to the latest rankings released by The Airports Council International on Monday.
The rankings also show that global airline travel is taking off again after the first year of the pandemic, though we still haven't returned to pre-COVID levels of flying.
Atlanta's airport held the "world's busiest" title for 22 years in a row before the pandemic hit. China's Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport knocked it out of the top spot in 2020, but Guangzhou fell back to the eighth spot in the latest ranking.
According to the ACI report, about 75.7 million people traveled through Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta Airport in 2021, which represents a hike of 76.4% from 2020.
However, traffic is still down nearly 32% over pre-pandemic numbers from 2019.
Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport was second on the list with an estimated 62.5 million passengers, followed by Colorado's Denver airport with 58.8 million passengers.
The ACI reports that there were about 4.5 billion global airline passengers last year, a 25% increase over the first year of the pandemic. However, that number is down 50% from pre-pandemic numbers in 2019.
Luis Felipe de Oliveira, ACI World's director-general, said in the release that the numbers represent an "encouraging trend of recovery" in reference to pandemic numbers and the hit that the travel industry took from the beginning of 2020.
"Although we are cautious that recovery could face multiple headwinds, the momentum created by reopening plans by countries could lead to an uptick in travel in the second half of 2022," he said.
The rankings also listed Dubai as the busiest airport in the world for international passengers.
These are the top 10 busiest airports in the world:
- Atlanta, Georgia (75.7 million)
- Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas (62.5 million)
- Denver, Colorado (58.8 million)
- Chicago, Illinois (54 million)
- Los Angeles, California (48 million)
- Charlotte, North Carolina (43.3 million)
- Orlando, Florida (40.3 million)
- Guangzhou, China (40.2 million)
- Chengdu, China (40.1 million)
- Las Vegas, Nevada (39.7 million)