Take an educated guess about which airport was the busiest in the world last year and you may end up with answers like Dubai or Beijing. But you would be wrong.
Rankings just revealed by Airports Council International have put Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson Airport in first place as the busiest airport in the world in 2017.
The result comes as a whopping 104 million passengers passed through there last year. And this wasn’t even a record, it was in fact a 0.3 per cent drop in passenger numbers on the previous year.
So why is Atlanta so busy? Location, location, location.
It is a major connecting hub and port of entry into North America. The city is within a two-hour flight of 80% of the United States population of more than 300 million people.
Beijing slotted in second place with 95.8 million passengers departing and arriving, while Dubai was third at 88.2million
Tokyo’s Haneda airport come in fourth at 85.4 million just beating Los Angeles which saw 84.5million travellers in 2017.
The overall trend noted from the report was that worldwide passenger traffic is on the up and up, increaseing 6.6% in 2017.
For those curious these were the 20 busiest airports in the world last year:
1. Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport (Georgia) — 104 million passengers
2. Beijing Capital International Airport (China) — 96 million
3. Dubai International Airport (United Arab Emirates) — 88 million
4. Tokyo Haneda International Airport (Japan) — 85 million
5. Los Angeles International Airport (California) — 84.6 million
6. Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport (Illinois) — 80 million
7. London Heathrow Airport (United Kingdom) — 78 million
8. Hong Kong International Airport (China) — 73 million
9. Shanghai Pudong International Airport (China) — 70 million
10. Aéroport de Paris-Charles de Gaulle (France) — 69 million
11. Amsterdam Airport Schiphol (Netherlands) — 68.5 million
12. Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport (Texas) — 67 million
13. Guangzhou Bai Yun International Airport (China) — 66 million
14. Frankfurt Am Main Airport (Germany) — 64.5 million
15. Atatürk International Airport (Turkey) — 64 million
16. Indira Gandhi International Airport (India) — 63.5 million
17. Soekarno-Hatta International Airport (Indonesia) — 63 million
18. Singapore Changi Airport (Singapore) — 62.22 million
19. Incheon International Airport (South Korea) — 62.16 million
20. Denver International Airport (Colorado) — 61 million
READ: World’s funniest, rudest, weirdest & scariest airport names
READ:GREEN POWER: The world’s first energy positive airport city is coming