What is the busiest airport in the world (by the number of the passenger) and why?
Today, I have to give a thanks to my friend who asked me a very interesting question yesterday evening.
“What is the busiest airport in the world (by the number of the passenger) and why?”
From pilot perspective, the traffic in the airport might be our concern aspect but I am not sure if we need to know how many passenger arriving and departing from an airport.
What a shame, I don’t know what is the busiest airport in the world although I am taking the aviation operations management diploma course. But if you don’t mind, I would like to tell you how could I collect the information. There is an NGO called ACI – Aiport Conuncil International. This origination issue some reports and publications every year about the airport operations status all over the world.
Compare to another two famous and reputable civil aviation organization – ICAO and IATA – the figure from the ACI report could be a reference.
Today, I have just done some research from the Internet about the question.
Source: ACI World publishes annual World Airport Traffic Report
With 13 airports out of the top 30 busiest passenger hubs, Asia-Pacific dominates the ranking for 2017. Traffic at the world’s 30 busiest air passenger hubs grew 5.4% last year, serving almost 2 billion passengers, 24% of all global passenger traffic.
Atlanta-Hartsfield-Jackson maintained its position as the world’s busiest airport by handling just under 104 million passengers in 2017; Beijing held second spot with over 95 million passengers; Dubai International remained in third position with more than 88 million passengers and maintained its position as the world’s busiest hub for international passenger traffic.
The world’s busiest airport in terms of the number of passenger handled was Atlanta-Hartsfield-Jackson, recorded with near 104 million passengers in 2017, according to ACI. The 2018 had just gone by, the ACI should have to use some time to consolidate the data before issuing new report. I have not been that particular airport and even USA. While I am reasoning why based on my knowledge, I noticed other eye-ball catching figures.
In 2017, we can see that Hong Kong International Airport was ranked as the 8th busiest airport in handling passenger traffic, with more than 72 million passenger arrival and departure flights. Meanwhile, the HKIA was the world busiest airport in Air Cargo Operations.
Before I make more analysis on why the Atlanta-Hartsfield-Jackson could outperform other airports all over the world. I would really thank to your question which help me to do more study on Cathay’s business.
Source: Cathay Pacific group releases combined traffic figures for October 2018
Cathay Pacific and Cathay Dragon carried a total of 2,883,056 passengers last month, an increase of 1.4% compared to November 2017. The passenger load factor decreased 0.3 percentage points to 83.3%, while capacity, measured in available seat kilometres (ASKs), increased by 4.5%. In the first eleven months of 2018, the number of passengers carried grew by 1.9% while capacity increased by 3.3%.
The two airlines carried 185,135 tonnes of cargo and mail last month, an decrease of 1.3% compared to the same month last year. The cargo and mail load factor fell by 1.5 percentage points to 70.1%. Capacity, measured in available freight tonne kilometres (AFTKs), was increased by 0.9% while cargo and mail revenue freight tonne kilometres (RFTKs) decreased by 1.1%. In the first eleven months of 2018, the tonnage rose by 5.7% against a 2.9% increase in capacity and a 5.3% increase in RFTKs.
Here, I have given you a lot of information from two categories of civil aviation operators. The previous one (airport authorities) are tend to focus on the traffic and movement – either arrival and departure flights or take off and landing frequency; The later one (airliners) generally measure their performance on those terms: Load factor, RPKs and RFTKs
In the aviation operations management lectures, the tutors always emphasize that the ultimate goal of all airlines are earning money. In the most simply formula:
Profit = Revenue – Cost
Two major costs are the fuel and the wages on flight crews. To offset these two operational costs plus other expenditure, the airlines have different ways to earn money – maximize the revenue. Some airlines may increase the frequency of flight and others may upgauge the fleet. In terms of passenger flight operations, the more seat provided for the market, the more chance to gain revenue to offset the cost. Similar concept apply to air cargo operations, the more space offering for shipment, the more opportunities to earn enough to counteract the cost. However, Passenger flights aim to transport people and the Cargo flight target to provide airport-to-airport service for shipment. Therefore, capacity in passenger sector is measured in available seat kilometers (ASKs) and that in cargo sector is measured in available freight tonne kilometers (AFTs).
- Capacity (PAX flight operations) = Available Seat Kilometers (ASK) = seats x km
– either bigger aircraft or more flight movement or longer the route- Capacity (CGO flight operations) = Available Tonne Kilometers (ATK) = tonne x km
Not sure if you aware of not, there are different holds (compartment) at the belly of passenger fleet. But the capacity calculation is same. Next, using a passenger flight for more discussion. If a narrow body (single aisle) A320 is able to accommodate 180 revenue passengers (only those paid for a seat should be counted), but there is only 18 revenue (paid)passengers . Then, load factor = (18/180)*100% = 10%
However, in reality, you might noticed that different passenger paid different amount for a ticket and the fact that, the engines are burning fuel – money. So, up to here, in the case of airline, the more capacity could only mean that it has more chances to earn revenue while the load factor only represent how is the market react to the supply.
Back to your question, I have not been USA and my focal point is not airport management. What I can guess is that compare to the Hong Kong International Airport (HKIA), there – Atlanta-Hartsfield-Jackson has more numbers of runway than HKIA. Also, they are literally two sets of parallel of runway. Not sure if you have heard the terms, wake turbulence. Using a sentence to describe is “a pair of violate vortex with counter-rotation direction behind the wingtip”. The configuration as well as the separation distance between the centerline of a set of parallel runway can make impact on the separation time between one take-off/landing and after next. In the Atlanta-Hartsfield-Jackson, from the photo at right, you could see that the center of the image is a array of terminal and there are some green area with pale yellow as well as grey lanes on both sides – the taxiway as well as two set of runways. As a result, the less time use on “wake turbulence separation”, the more movement and traffic.
Another factor that I can think of is the usage of the airport as well as the turnaround time. I was work as a ramp coordinator. I notice that the low-cost carrier (LCC) or the regional airline tend to use narrow-body fleet (with single-aisle), the services time is far less than those wide-body aircraft. Also, either A320 (narrow-body) or A330 (wide-body), if less services required, the faster the turnaround time, the more the flight movement, then the busier of the airport could be. Using catering and cleaning for example, some LCC flights have no catering service required and the cabin crew often finish the cleaning task in just five minutes – the hold turnaround operation for a A320 flights with 180 inbound and outbound passengers (total 360 passengers) is only spending 30-36 minutes. It’s a bit demanding, isn’t it?
Now, let’s stop here for this question, I am really appreciate your inspiring question and I am going to make another post about the airport.