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You are here: Home / Advice / Biggest and Busiest Airports in the World
Biggest and Busiest Airports in the World
In terms of physical size, the biggest/largest airports in the world are:
- King Fahd International Airport in Saudi Arabia which is the largest by area and is 780 km2 and is bigger than the neighbouring country of Bahrain!
- Denver International Airport is 137.25 km2 with six runways.
The Dubai World Central International Airport is currently under construction and due to be fully operational by 2017. It will have 6 x 4.5km long runways, underground parking for 100,000 cars, capacity for 4 planes to land at the same time, 16 cargo terminals capable of handling 12 million tonnes per year and the airport will be able to handle over 120 million passengers per year - which is 30% more than Atlanta - the busiest airport in the world.
Which is the world's busiest airport?
It may seem like a question with a simple answer, but many of the worlds big airports claim to be the busiest under different criteria. Basing "busiest" as the most number of passengers, the top 5 busiest airports in the world are:
- Atlanta Airport in USA carries the largest number of passengers and the most arrivals and departures. Almost 75 million passengers used in in 2007.
- London Heathrow in the UK carries the most international passengers and 67.5 million passengers used it in 2007.
- Chicago O'Hare Airport in the USA carried over 64 million passengers in 2007.
- Tokyo Airport in Japan carried over 55 million passengers in 2007.
- Los Angeles Airport carried almost 52 million passengers in 2007.
Other trivia....
- London Gatwick is the busiest single runway airport.
- Frankfurt Airport serves the most international destinations.
- If all of traffic for London's five airports were added together, they would collectively be the busiest airports in any city across the world.
Anything we didn't cover in this article? Been to one of the airports mentioned? Other airports which you think are amazing? Let us know in the comments below!