The results are in: for the third year in a row, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport is the busiest (in terms of flights) in the United States. How many flights do you need to log to become the busiest in the nation? Lots.
“The Atlanta airport logged 994,466 flights in 2007, up 1.8 percent from 976,447 flights in 2006,” according to the Federal Aviation Administration. “Its rival, Chicago O’Hare International Airport, was listed second busiest, with 935,000 flights in 2007.”
Atlanta’s airport was also the busiest in terms of passengers (as of 2006, the most recent year with available data) with 41.35 million travelers bouncing around its terminals.
The heavy load can be blamed on a mixture of two things, a spokesman for AirTran said. “… you have the world’s largest hub in Delta‘s Atlanta hub. AirTran operates the world’s largest low-cost carrier hub.”