Atlanta Remains World's Busiest Airport
Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson International held its ranking as the world's busiest passenger airport in 2006, followed by Chicago's O'Hare and London's Heathrow, according to preliminary figures released this week.
Some 84.8 million passengers went through the Atlanta terminal, the Geneva-based Airports Council International said; a 1.2 percent decline over the previous year. O'Hare had 76.2 million passengers, and Heathrow 67.5 million. Both numbers signal modest decreases compared with 2005.
Traffic at U.S. airports declined because of the restructuring of Delta and Northwest and the closure of Independence Air, the council said.
"Heathrow's flat results stemmed from the August security scare and severe weather in December, but also show the stagnating effect of lack of expansion," the council said.
The top 20 in passengers (with percentage change since 2005):
Beijing was the top performer in the Asia Pacific region with an 18.3 percent increase in passenger traffic, the council said. Denver was the best U.S. performer with a 9.1 percent increase.
Hartsfield also led in numbers of flights, handling 976,447, a decline of 0.4 percent. O'Hare, which was first in 2005, finished second last year with 958,643, a drop of 1.4 percent.
The total number of passengers worldwide rose by 5.1 percent to 4.4 billion, according to the council.
Memphis, Tenn. — headquarters of Federal Express — continued to have the world's busiest airport for cargo, handling 4.08 million tons. Hong Kong was second with 3.97 million tons. Anchorage, Alaska, was third with 3.09 million tons.
The numbers released Monday by the Airports Council may change slightly in June when final figures are released.