Orlando cracks list of world’s top 10 busiest airports as U.S. leisure traffic soars
(Reuters) – Orlando cracked a listing of the world’s prime 10 busiest airports by passengers for the primary time final yr, as the house of the Walt Disney World and Common Studios Florida theme parks joined principally American hubs as hovering leisure journey underpins a restoration in site visitors.
Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta Worldwide Airport topped the rankings by passenger site visitors printed Monday by Airports Council Worldwide (ACI), which relies on a preliminary compilation of 2021 world knowledge.
The report additionally ranked airports by cargo volumes and plane actions.
Whereas the US has seen the quickest and strongest restoration in journey, fueled by leisure journeys to locations like Florida, it nonetheless trails 2019 site visitors ranges.
In line with FlightAware knowledge for March 6 to 13, U.S. industrial flights had been down virtually 18% in contrast with the identical interval in 2019. In contrast, world site visitors was down practically 27%.
With 40.4 million passengers, Florida’s Orlando Worldwide Airport ranked seventh in 2021, simply forward of China’s Guangzhou Baiyun Worldwide Airport, and breaking into the highest 10 for the primary time since knowledge was out there in 1991, ACI instructed Reuters.
Whereas China stays an aviation powerhouse the nation’s worldwide borders remained closed in 2021. Home site visitors fell because of the nation’s zero-COVID coverage which meant a sequence of outbreaks which can be tiny by world requirements led to strict inner journey controls, dampening demand.
A spokeswoman for the Higher Orlando Aviation Authority mentioned the airport is anticipating greater site visitors in 2022 as worldwide and enterprise journey return in larger numbers.
The rankings “inform the story of an encouraging pattern of restoration, with many of the recurrent busiest airports pre-COVID-19 again on the prime,” ACI World Director Common Luis Felipe de Oliveira mentioned in an announcement.
Visitors on the prime 10 busiest airports in 2021 represented about 463 million passengers or virtually 10% of worldwide site visitors, ACI mentioned.
(Reporting By Allison Lampert in Montreal; Extra reporting by Jamie Freed in Sydney; Enhancing by Andrea Ricci)
