Travelers coming and leaving: The top 100 busiest airports in 2011

Some numbers overwhelm, also are beyond the scale of human thinking: 3,200 million passengers passed through the 100 busiest airports of the world in 2011. Some 998 million they did in Europe and 989 million in North America, nearly two thirds of the traffic of the “Top 100”.

The world’s largest airports continued seeing more passengers who passed through them: Heathrow stand up 5.1%, Atlanta (the largest in the world) by 3.3% and Beijin 4.5%. Although the largest percentage increases were among emerging countries: the terminal of New Delhi was visited by 34.7 million passengers (an increase of 17.8% over 2010), Rio was not far behind, with 17% of new passengers, and Xiamen in China took up 15.9% of visits.

From the analysis of the preliminary figures for 2011 provided by the Airports Council International, it is observed that the state of global economic problems is also affecting the operation airport. Thirteen of the 100 busiest airports in the world have suffered a decline in passengers. One that comes off worse and by far is the Tokyo airport with a decrease of 20.5%. Athens under a crisis of confidence and with a lot of social conflicts lost 6.7% of passengers in 2011. Both loosers were followed by the two Japanese Sapporo and Fukuoka airports.

United States shows no big downs, but there are several cities with a slight decrease in traffic. Another interesting fact is the loss of passengers at London Stansted, where Ryanair concentrated much of their operations. There, passenger traffic fell by 2.9% to 18 million.

European countries in crisis?

But not all data is bad, and despite the recession in several European countries and the serious difficulties faced by all those southern European states, the number of travelers in the region increased by an average of 7.4%, compared with overall variation across the “Top 100” list that was in a 5.1% increase over 2010.

Between the European countries that have the greatest difficulties due the financial and economic crisis affecting the old continent, there are not big downturns in 2011, except for the case of the terminal of the Greek capital mentioned above and that is ranked 99th in the table. Even financially rescued countries, or those who might be in the future, have suffered large declines: Madrid-Barajas remains virtually the same as the previous year with a very slight fall of 0.4%, and contrasts with Barcelona-El Prat that grew a staggering 15.1%. Dublin or Milan only grew by 1.6% and 1.8% respectively, but maintained a modest upward trend.

Latin America

The list of the 100 most popular airports in the world, only highlights six Latin America airports. In all cases the variation from 2010 is positive and on average around 10%. Brazil is the undisputed leader, as between São Paulo (Guarulhos and Congonhas), Brasilia, and Rio de Janeiro (Galeao), totals 78 million passengers in 2011. The other airports with greater passenger traffic are Mexico City and Bogota, which recorded increases of 8.5% and 7.4% respectively. Out of the “Top 100” is Arturo Merino Benitez in Santiago de Chile with 11,892,179 passengers in 2011, as per terminal management public information.

Air transport in Argentina continues to be subdued, and shows no major variations from 2010. Although Aeropuertos Argentina 2000 said that Ezeiza airport is one of the largest in Latin America, the international terminal of Buenos Aires received 8,276,159 passengers last year, according to the concessionaire. Meanwhile the metropolitan Aeroparque, close to the city downtown, amounted to 8,250,971 passengers after the regionalization of flights that operate from there (as published in 2012 at 33A News magazine issue # 32). Without doubt, there was a transfer of regional flights from Ezeiza to Aeroparque.

Surces: Aeropuertos Argentina 2000 (official), SCL Aeropuerto de Santiago, Airports Council International (official), and Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Censos – INDEC (official).