With all of the travel meltdowns happening in Europe, from passenger caps at London Heathrow to baggage meltdowns and long lines at Amsterdam Schipol, to strikes affecting Frankfurt, Munich and recently Stockholm – you’d think that the greatest demand and passenger volumes were happening in Europe. Those airports are overwhelmed, but looking at full year passenger traffic last year the busiest airports were overwhelmingly in the United States and not a single one in Europe.
Out of the top busiest airports in the world last year, eight of the top 10 were in the United States. In fact, 10 of the top 12 were in the U.S. as well.
These top 20 airports handled 19% of world passenger traffic in 2021 (863 million total passengers), up 43% over 2020 but still 32% below 2019 levels.
Atlanta was the busiest airport in the world by passengers again, followed by Dallas, Denver, Chicago O’Hare and LAX. And LAX is not yet close to back to 2019 passenger levels.
Bear in mind that the U.S. bounced back faster than others, in part because pandemic restrictions were lifted earlier and in part because the U.S. had a big head start on vaccinations.
| 2021 Rank | 2020 Rank | Airport | % Pax Change | |||
| 1 | 2 | Atlanta (ATL) | 76.4 | |||
| 2 | 4 | Dallas/Fort Worth (DFW) | 58.7 | |||
| 3 | 8 | Denver (DEN) | 74.4 | |||
| 4 | 13 | Chicago O’Hare (ORD) | 75.1 | |||
| 5 | 15 | Los Angeles (LAX) | 66.8 | |||
| 6 | 18 | Charlotte (CLT) | 59.2 | |||
| 7 | 27 | Orlando (MCO) | 86.7 | |||
| 8 | 1 | Guangzhou (CAN) | -8 | |||
| 9 | 3 | Chengdu (CTU) | -1.5 | |||
| 10 | 22 | Las Vegas (LAS} | 78.6 | |||
| 11 | 26 | Phoenix (PHX) | 77.2 | |||
| 12 | 38 | Miami (MIA) | 99.9 | |||
| 13 | 16 | Delhi (DEL) | 30.3 | |||
| 14 | 20 | Istanbul (IST) | 58.5 | |||
| 15 | 5 | Shenzhen (SZX) | -4.1 | |||
| 16 | 32 | Seattle (SEA) | 80.4 | |||
| 17 | 25 | Mexico City (MEX) | 64 | |||
| 18 | 6 | Chongqing (CKG) | 2.4 | |||
| 19 | 10 | Shanghai Hongqiao (SHA) | 6.6 | |||
| 20 | 7 | Beijing Capital (PEK) | -5.4 |
Every Chinese airport on the list save Chongqing saw its traffic drop between 2020 and 2021, and every one saw its ranking in the top 20 drop. And that’s before this year’s major Chinese lockdowns in the face of new Covid variants and an immunologically-naive population.
The top 11 airports in the world by number of flights (aircraft movements) were all in the U.S. Many of the world’s busiest airports get there via disproportionately more widebody aircraft with many passengers, while the U.S. is a large domestic market featuring a heavy reliance on narrowbodies (more flights with fewer passengers).
Last year’s figures are not representative. It’s not particularly that it bounced back faster from COVID, but more due to the overwhelmingly domestic nature of much air travel in the USA being permitted, whereas many countries (including the USA) had major restrictions on international travel. Indeed the USA was one of the slowest Western countries to make it easier, and it still to this day has some draconian restrictions in place (eg the forthcoming US Open tennis being severely compromised by the US not allowing the top player to participate).
So it’s all to do with domestic travel, and little to do with bouncing back quicker.
coz US doesn’t have high speed rails, and it’s a pretty sad thing.
High speed rail makes no sense in most of the US, we’re far too spread out. Europe is far denser, it makes sense there, and even then, none of the rail lines except for Paris-Lyon is profitable. Just think what it would take to build a high-speed rail network centered on O’Hare in Chicago, where every flight under 500 miles is replaced by rail. (Given total door to door transport time, that’s roughly the breakeven point for near-future high-speed rail.) That’s a lot of track, and in an area that’s relatively easy to build. But what are the traffic levels? Is there enough travel in that radius to justify the infrastructure costs? And that doesn’t interconnect all the cities in that radius, without going through ORD, so that’s even more track. I think you’ll find we build airports because that’s the most economical way to travel in the US, given our geography.
The map embedded in the article below is a good example of what this means. If you were to take the populations of US states and overlay them in Western Europe areas of equal population, you could fit the US in the UK, Ireland, France, BENELUX, Demark, northeastern Spain, the northern two-thirds of Italy, Switzerland, and most of Germany. Instead, we’re spread across an area from Lisbon to Moscow and Lapland to Sicily. If you drive 250 miles, there are major cities at either end and a whole lot of empty in between. That same distance in Europe gets you city after city. And even then, when you get in the rural areas, you need a car.
https://moverdb.com/us-states-europe-population/#:~:text=In%20terms%20of%20size%20the,(4.3%20million%20sq%20km).
@chris there’s only a few routes in the US where high speed rail actually makes sense and would be financially sound to do so. There’s not any real way to do it in the NE corridor at this point. The cost would be insane.
@NB is completely correct on this one. Last year most European counties were closed for over half the year. Where as in the US rollout of the Covid vaccine was consistently faster than most countries (thank you operation warp speed). Embolden with new perceived immunity Americans rediscovered the good ole US of A. Travel to Europe didn’t really come on line until later summer last year, and at anemic rates. 2021 is a total one off because the passenger traffic followed the slow recovery from the pandemic and the slow opening up of many countries. Many Americans got their travel legs back in shape cautiously first in the US, last year, and now this year more Internationally, especially Europe.
If you really want to compare Europe and US airports, do so next year for 2023 (although I think US still will have higher numbers).
Gary, I don’t think anyone is equating this years busy European situation with last years travel statistics.
Surprising to me that Phoenix, Vegas, and Seattle have more traffic than SFO or JFK (though I guess that’s because OAK/SJC and EWR/LGA also account for a bunch of traffic). PHX should really have CLEAR if it’s that busy (though I flew in/out of there a couple weeks ago and was through security in under 5 minutes with just PreCheck — maybe it was an especially slow day).
@shza PHX does have CLEAR. https://www.clearme.com/where-we-are/phoenix-sky-harbor-international-airport
SHZA I concur. At SFO I think this is a reflection of most of Asia being essentially closed to non-citizens for 2021 (and still today) and business travel cratering which grounded much of silicon valley. Similarly JFK reflects Europe being closed for a good chunk of 2021. Also a major reduction in O/D traffic as New Yorkers and Californians have been the most cautious about masking, travel etc.
LAX is a bit of a surprise but perhaps that reflects its status as a gateway to central and south america (similar to Miami) and of course Mexico never closed. Socal was also popular for vacations last year.
keep china closed naxt year too!!!!
we dont need another pandemic!!
not racist, FACT. COVID, SARS, BLACK DEATH,
Impressive that 5 of the top 12 are AA hubs.