World’s Busiest Airports

The Airports Council International has just released their annual 2007 World Airport Traffic Report which ranks the world’s busiest airports. According to the report worldwide airports in 2007 welcomed a record of 4.8 billion passengers.

The world’s busiest airport for passengers remained the Atlanta airport handling 89 million passengers. Second was Chicago’s O’Hare (76m), and third, London Heathrow (68m). The report also mentioned that the fastest area of growth in passengers occurred in the Middle East with an 11.3 percent increase.

World’s busiest airport for cargo was Memphis followed by Hong Kong and Anchorage. Los Angeles ranked number 12 globally.

The growth in cargo traffic slowed slightly to 3.2 percent over the previous year, with 88.5 million metric tonnes handled in 2007, possibly due to the increase in fuel price pushing cargo traffic to other transport means. Once again, the hub of FedEx airlines, Memphis, was the largest cargo airport in the world, followed by Hong Kong and Anchorage. However, Memphis traffic is predominantly domestic cargo which is why it doesn’t appear on the list of top ten airports handling international freight, where Asian airports dominate.

Read here for the Airports Council International’s complete report and findings.