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China dominates top 10 busiest airports table
November 10th 2021
China accounted for seven of the top 10 busiest airports in 2020 as COVID-19 slashed global airport passenger numbers by more than 5.6 billion compared with pre-pandemic highs. Read More » The situation improved this year but Airports Council International (ACI) World still forecasts the pandemic will remove another 4.6 billion passengers from airports by the end of the year. This will see passengers at half the level they were two years ago. ACI World’s latest World Airport Traffic Report, released on Tuesday, shows global aircraft movements experienced a sharp reduction in 2020, decreasing by 39.5%, to only 62 million, while global cargo was 9.6% lower than 2019. However, a faster recovery in domestic traffic in the past two years means passenger numbers in this segment are expected to reach 3.1 billion by year-end, or about 58.5% of 2019 levels. One impact of the shift to domestic passengers has been a dramatic reordering of ACI World’s rankings of the world’s busiest airports. The U.S. is now home to just three of the 10 busiest airports. Long-time kingpin, Atlanta, has ceded the top spot to Guangzhou, which climbed from 11th spot in 2019. Dallas/Fort Worth, the world’s 10th busiest airport in 2019, moved up to fourth position in 2020. Several Chinese airports saw meteoric rises in traffic from the benefits of strong domestic traffic with only one, Beijing, falling in the ranks. The new pecking order is Guangzhou (up 10 places), Atlanta (down one place), Chengdu (up 21 places), Dallas/Fort Worth (up six places), Shenzhen (up 21 places) Chongqing (up 42 places), Beijing (down five places), Denver (up eight places), Kunming (up 28 places) and Shanghai (up 36 places).
