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The airport that lost its title as the busiest airport in the world last year is back on top and busier than ever before.

Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport in China claimed top spot in 2020, bumping said airport with a 22-year top slot streak into second.

But that backseat position hasn’t lasted long as Georgia’s Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL) has come booming back.

Airports Council International (ACI) recently released the 2021 rankings, putting ATL (below) back on top after recovering from “2020’s precipitous plunge in air traffic as the pandemic took hold,” per CNN.

Image: WikiVoyage.org

Image: Getty Images

So what does being busy mean, exactly?

In 2021, the Atlanta airport saw 75.7 million passengers. That figure is up a whopping 76% from 2020 but still nearly 32% below pre-pandemic 2019 figures.

Guangzhou’s airport dropped to No. 8 in 2021, with 40.3 million passengers.

US airports dominated the rankings with eight of the top 10, and the other two are in China.

That is the opposite of 2020, when China dominated the rankings because it was “one of the first to come out of the initial waves of the pandemic and it actually almost reached a full recovery by the end of 2020,” according to Patrick Lucas, ACI World’s vice president for economics.

Here are the world’s top 10 busiest airports for passenger traffic in 2021:

1. 1. Atlanta (ATL): 75,7 million passengers, up 76% from 2020
   2. Dallas/Fort Worth (DFW): 62,5 million passengers, up 59% from 2020
   3. Denver (DEN): 58,8 million passengers, up 74% from 2020
   4. Chicago O’Hare (ORD): 54 million passengers, up 75% from 2020
   5. Los Angeles (LAX): 48 million passengers, up 67% from 2020
   6. Charlotte (CLT): 43,3 million passengers, up 59% from 2020
   7. Orlando (MCO): 40,4 million passengers, up 87% from 2020
   8. Guangzhou (CAN): 40,3 million passengers, down 8% from 2020
   9. Chengdu (CTU): 40,1 million passengers, down 1,5% from 2020
   10. Las Vegas (LAS): 39,8 million passengers, up 79% from 2020

Luis Felipe de Oliveira, ACI World’s director-general, reckons that “reopening plans by countries could lead to an uptick in travel in the second half of 2022”.

This is further substantiated by Lucas:

“Vaccines actually have been the passport to travel, but as we can see now, many major markets are opening up and … a lot of countries have come to realize that curbing travel or imposing travel restrictions actually does not do anything,” he said.

“If anything, it creates even more harm. So meaning that it disrupts the socioeconomic gains of air transport and tourism and so on.”

ACI reckons total passenger traffic numbers will likely fully recover to pre-pandemic levels by 2024.

The trade association believes that passengers and consumers will “bite the bullet” and spend money on travel, despite how much more expensive it has become.

Staying locked indoors at home will do that to a person.

[source:cnn]