About this chart race
Atlanta has been the world's busiest airport in 25 of these 26 years. Only 2020 broke it: Guangzhou finished on 43.8 million passengers against Atlanta's 42.9 million. The pandemic is visible across the whole chart - the top ten's combined traffic fell from 863 million passengers in 2019 to 370 million in 2020, and Atlanta alone lost 61%. The long-run story is the shift east: Dubai first appears in 2004 on 21.7 million and reaches 95.2 million by 2025, second in the world; Istanbul goes from 21.3 million in 2006 to 84.4 million; Beijing climbs to a peak of 101.0 million in 2018, then drops out of the world top 50 completely in 2022. Twenty-eight different airports have appeared in the top ten since 2000.
This animated ranking shows how passengers per year changed across 28 series between 2000 and 2025. The bars re-order themselves as the years advance, so overtakes are visible as they happen rather than hidden inside a table. Use the list on the left to choose exactly who competes, drag the slider to jump to any year, or open the table view to read the underlying numbers.
As of 2025, Atlanta leads with 106.3.
Included in this race
Atlanta, Beijing, Dubai, Tokyo Haneda, Los Angeles, Dallas/Fort Worth, Shanghai Pudong, Chicago O'Hare, London Heathrow, Istanbul, Guangzhou, Denver, Delhi, Paris CDG, Hong Kong, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Madrid, Shenzhen, Jakarta, Charlotte, Las Vegas, Orlando, San Francisco, Chengdu, Shanghai Hongqiao, Chongqing, Xi'an.
Source
Data from Airports Council International (via Wikipedia). Every figure shown comes from this source — nothing is estimated or generated.
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