Heathrow worlds busiest airport??????

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20 years 11 months

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Went to a trivia night on saturday and one of the questions was what is th worlds busiest airport.
My answer was Chicago Ohare, but their answer was Heathrow.
Who was right???
My understanding is Chicago is the busiest overall in movements but Heathrow is the busiest with International movments.

Original post

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20 years 11 months

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You were right Steve, O'Hare is the busiest overall airport, but Heathrow is the busiest international.

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24 years 2 months

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yes its O'hare.

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24 years 2 months

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I thought it was Atlanta?

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20 years 9 months

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Yep your right Saab 2000, the busiest airport in the world is infact Atlanta Hartsfield.

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24 years 2 months

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Atlanta is busiest in pasenger handling while O'hare is in aircraft handling.

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24 years 2 months

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Yes, so it is. In Europe Paris CDG is actually the busiest in terms of movements whereas Heathrow is the busiest in terms of passengers.

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24 years 2 months

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i think frankfurt is busier than CDG.

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20 years 9 months

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I agree with monster, fankfurt is actually bigger than CDG.

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24 years 2 months

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No CDG is busier than both Heathrow and Frankfurt in terms of movements. Below are the movements and passenger figures for these three airports from the year to date.
Passenger Figures:
4: LONDON, GB (LHR) 9 196 705
7: PARIS, FR (CDG) 6 898 791
8: FRANKFURT, DE (FRA) 6 801 211

Aircraft movements:
6: PARIS, FR (CDG) 80 548
14: LONDON, GB (LHR) 73 647
15: FRANKFURT, DE (FRA) 72 718

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24 years 2 months

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This argument is usually due to the word 'International'. Several US airports have many more movements than LHR but a 2 hour flight from a US airport is prbably domestic whereas any 2 hour flight from LHR is international. As the UK is tiny compared to the US it has a much higher percentage of international departures which is how it claims to be the worlds largest international airport rather than the worlds largest airport.

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20 years 8 months

Posts: 939

Its sad because Heathrow in the sixties seventies and early eighties was the leading european airport in terms of passengers and movements but it is gradually being overhauled by airports like Frankfurt and CDG. The problem is of course lack of runways. whilst ground facilities have expanded it is still stuck with the same number of runways while CDG and Frankfurt (not to mention Madrid, Vienna and Amsterdam) have all added more runway capacity to cope. The new runway at Heathrow when it is eventually built is too little too late. The problems could be seen thirty years ago. I remember one busy summers day in 1971 standing on the Queens Building (in the days when it was open) and I counted 23 aircraft waiting to take off.

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20 years 9 months

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CDG has more flights and less pax because many of the flights are operated by Embraer 145's,146's and CRJ's. Every city in France wants a link with Paris so there are loads of internal flights. They have given up on Orly( aaahh TAT Fh-227's,Nord 262's those were the days!).So they are only bringing in 30-80 pax each time. Anything smaller than a A319 is a rare sight at the 'row.

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24 years 2 months

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thats pretty much the same in Germany, every city is linked via airport or train.

i dont mind FRA, it's more user friendly than CDG imho.

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24 years 2 months

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Originally posted by robbelc
CDG has more flights and less pax because many of the flights are operated by Embraer 145's,146's and CRJ's. Every city in France wants a link with Paris so there are loads of internal flights. They have given up on Orly( aaahh TAT Fh-227's,Nord 262's those were the days!).So they are only bringing in 30-80 pax each time. Anything smaller than a A319 is a rare sight at the 'row.

Quite true , however they haven't given up Orly , which handles something like 31 millions pax a year.

ORY has a limit of 2500000 movements a year.

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24 years 2 months

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AF have 21 domestic destinations from ORY, 2 in Corsica (ok, they're domestic too...), 1 in Spain (Seville... *sigh*), 1 in Morrocco (Marrakech), 2 in Italy (Milan/Bergamo and Naples), 1 in Ing-ur-lund (London City) and 4 DOM-TOM's (Pointe-à-Pitre, Fort-de-France, Cayenne and La Réunion)

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24 years 2 months

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That's correct , however there many other airlines based in ORY.

Among the most famous :
Iberia , Corsair , TAP , Tunis Air , Aeris , etc