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Travelling in a crowded airport compounds the heightened stress most of us feel when taking a trip abroad, just longing to reach that destination without a hitch.
On that note, one of London’s travelling hubs has just been named as the fourth-busiest airport in the entire world.
It’s climbed up the rankings since last year, too, having come in at seventh place in the previous list of the busiest airports around the world, leapfrogging Denver, Tokyo, and Istanbul on its way to fourth place. The 79.2 million passengers going through Heathrow last year means it sits behind only Dallas-Fort Worth (81.7 million), Dubai (86.9 million), and Atlanta (104.6 million) in the world positioning.
Now, it should also be pointed out that not only is it London’s busiest airport, it’s also the biggest – so a busy day here may not feel quite as cramped as it would in one of London’s smaller airports. Still, it’s a hell of a lot of people using the same spot to travel at once!
Who do we have to thank for this data? That would be the Airports Council International (ACI), who calculate the number of passengers travelling through the airports each year and crunch the numbers to provide us with the top 10 busiest hubs.
ACI’s study has also concluded that air travel has made a significant recovery of 93.8% from pre-pandemic levels, and that travel is on the up with the total passenger forecast standing at 8.5 billion for 2023.
Top 10 busiest airports in the world
- Atlanta, USA
- Dubai, UAE
- Dallas/Forth Worth, USA
- London Heathrow, UK
- Tokyo, Japan
- Denver, USA
- Istanbul, Turkey
- Los Angeles, USA
- Chicago, USA
- New Delhi, India
You can read the study of the world’s busiest airports in full via the ACI website.