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

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.

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