Business
Business

Hartsfield-Jackson traffic declines, but airport is still world's busiest

Source: Hartsfield-Jackson

Credit: Kelly Yamanouchi

Credit: Kelly Yamanouchi

Source: Hartsfield-Jackson
By
Jan 30, 2018

Hartsfield-Jackson International handled 103.9 million passengers in 2017, down from the previous year but still maintaining the airport's position of being the world's busiest airport.

It's the 20th year in a row that Hartsfield-Jackson has been the busiest airport in the world, though in the past Chicago O'Hare has surpassed Atlanta in the number of flights handled.

At the Atlanta airport, passenger counts took a significant dip in December, a month when the airport's power outage and a snowstorm caused thousands of flight cancellations. A massive round of flight cancellations after an April thunderstorm also depressed traffic. That kept the total number of passengers for the year below the record of more than 104.1 million passengers handled by Hartsfield-Jackson in 2016.

GET MORE ON MYAJC.COM: To read about other factors that caused a decline in traffic, what an Atlanta airport official says about the decline and how rival Chicago O'Hare is doing, get the full story on MyAJC.com.

MORE: 

Hartsfield-Jackson retains title of world’s busiest airport

Atlanta airport loses half its ‘busiest’ title

Why one day of thunderstorms turned into a five-day Delta meltdown

Georgia Power suspects equipment failure caused airport fire, outage

Delta cancels hundreds of flights amid winter storm Hartsfield-Jackson had a decline in passenger counts in 2017, but is still the world's busiest airport.

About the Author

As business team lead, Kelly Yamanouchi edits and writes business stories. She graduated from Harvard and has a master's degree from Northwestern.

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