Singapore’s Changi Airport ranked ninth among all international airports for total passenger movements in 2022, with its 31.9 million passengers making it the only airport in Asia to make the top 10.
The Airports Council International (ACI) World last week released its annual list of the busiest airports worldwide for 2022, which showed global passenger traffic growing by 53.5% year-on-year to almost 7 billion. This also represented 73.8% of 2019 levels.
While Asia still lags much of the world in terms of its recovery trajectory, Changi Airport enjoyed a 953% year-on-year increase in passenger traffic – climbing from 95th spot in 2021 back to ninth. This was, however, still 52.8% lower than Changi welcomed in 2019, when it ranked seventh globally.
Dubai Airport was the busiest for international passengers with almost 66.1 million people enplaned or deplaned, while Atlanta International Airport was the busiest in the world when domestic passengers are taken into account with 93.7 million passenger movements.
“The new top 10 busiest airports for passenger traffic reflects the resilience of the airport and aviation industry, and the eagerness of passengers to travel by air,” said ACI World Director General, Luis Felipe de Oliveira.
“While US airport hubs were able to recover quicker due to their strong domestic market, we are now witnessing global hubs joining upper ranks—including Dubai, Istanbul and London Heathrow airport. While we continue to march forward cautiously amidst multiple headwinds that could impact the speed and magnitude of global air traffic recovery, the latest rankings represent an important milestone in reaching pre-pandemic levels.
“The re-opening of China, the second largest aviation market after the US, is now expected to bring an overall gain, both domestically and for international travel.”
According to the ACI, there were close to 89 million global aircraft movements in 2022, up 20.4% over the previous year and representing a recovery of 82.5% from pre-pandemic levels.
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