World's Busiest Airports

World's busiest airports can be defined as the ones which handle the maximum amount of traffic, of passengers and cargo - more than any other airport. There is a definition for this, as given by the Airports Council International (ACI), which defines and measures the airport traffic in 3 different criteria. They are:

• Passenger Traffic: It's a count of the total number of passengers boarding and de-boarding a plane, that is the passengers in transit counted once.
• Cargo Traffic: It's a count of total loaded and unloaded freight and mail in metric tonnes.
• Traffic Movement: It's the total count of the number of take-offs and landings on an airport.

Based on Passenger Traffic

Passenger traffic is measured by the total number of passengers who board or de-board a plane in an airport. ACI describes a passenger as a person who arrives, departs or transits through the airport on a given day. London has the world's busiest city airspace with 2 of its airports (Heathrow and Gatwick) regularly found in the top thirty busiest airports. The top three airports with the number of passengers they handled, is given below. The below given passenger figures are ACI's year-to-date figures from January, 2009 to February, 2009.

Rank	Airport	Location	Total Passengers
1	Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport	Atlanta, Georgia, USA	12,696,621
2	Beijing Capital International Airport	Chaoyang, Beijing, China	9,927,000
3	Tokyo International Airport	Ota, Tokyo, Japan	9,473,232

Based on International Passenger Traffic

By international passenger traffic is meant the total count of only the overseas passengers, that is total passenger traffic minus passenger traffic from the native country. Here is the list of the top three busiest airports by international passenger traffic. The figures mentioned below are ACI's year-to-date figures from January, 2008 to December, 2008.

Rank	Airport	Location	Total International Passengers
1	Heathrow Airport	London, Britain	61,345,518
2	Charles de Gaulle Airport	Paris, France	55,804,279
3	Amsterdam Airport Schiphol	Amsterdam	47,349,319

Based on Cargo Traffic

The total loaded and unloaded cargo is measured in metric tonnes. The figures given below are ACI's figures of the year 2008.

Rank	Airport	Location	Total Cargo
1	Memphis International Airport	Memphis, Tennessee, USA	3,695,561
2	Hong Kong International Airport	Lantau, Hong Kong, China	3,365,724
3	Shanghai Pudong International Airport	Pudong, Shanghai, China	2,598,795

Based on Traffic Movement

ACI describes one total movement as landing or take-off of an aircraft. The surprising fact about the busiest airports by traffic movement is that 9 out of the top 10 airports are from the United States. The lone airport other than of the US is the Charles de Gaulle Airport, Paris which is ranked 9th. The top three are given below. The following figures are ACI's figures for the year 2008.

Rank	Airport	Location	Total Movements
1	Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport	Atlanta, Georgia, USA	978,824
2	O'Hare International Airport	Chicago, Illinois, USA	881,566
3	Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport	Dallas, Texas, USA	656,310

Beijing Capital International Airport saw a jump of nearly 7 million passengers due to the 2008 Olympic Games, or else, Chicago's O'Hare International Airport would have been third in the list of busiest airports by passenger traffic. The rankings are always stable, until an event like Olympic Games is held that brings a whole lot of tourists into the country, changing the figures of total number of passengers at the airport drastically.