London Heathrow named world’s fourth busiest airport

If you’re travelling through Heathrow this summer, you might want to allow a little extra time to avoid the crowds. The London Flight Hub has just been crowned the fourth busiest airport in the world. As if flying wasn’t stressful enough!

In 2023, Heathrow was the seventh-busiest airport in the world, according to the Airports Council International (ACI), but has now crept up to number four, overtaking Denver, Tokyo and Istanbul. Last year, Heathrow saw a whopping 79.2 million passengers. In the ranking, it is just three percentage points behind Dallas-Fort Worth in third place and nine percentage points behind Dubai in second place.

LHR is also the busiest airport in Europe and is the only European hub to rank among the top 10 busiest airports in the world. We may have lost the European Championship, but at least we still have this.

Last month, London Airport also recorded its busiest day ever, handling more than 268,000 passengers on June 30.

Atlanta remains the world’s busiest aviation hub, expected to carry more than 100 million passengers in 2023. That’s partly because it’s home to Delta, the world’s largest airline by revenue.

View the full rankings on the ACI website here.

The 10 Busiest Airports in the World

1. Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson, USA

2. Dubai, United Arab Emirates

3. Dallas Fort Worth, USA

4. London Heathrow, UK

5. Tokyo, Japan

6. Denver, USA

7. Istanbul, Turkey

8. Los Angeles, USA

9. Chicago O’Hare, USA

10. New Delhi, India

ICYMI: London’s Heathrow Airport saw a record number of passengers last year.

Plus: British Airways is expanding its flights from London to Brazil and Argentina.

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