The world’s busiest airport was slightly less busy last year, with Hartsfield-Jackson International’s traffic declining about 1.1 percent to some 94.4 million passengers in 2013.
The decline came even as a number of other big airports saw growth in passenger traffic.
Hartsfield-Jackson officials say Atlanta’s airport remains the world’s busiest. But other airports — in Beijing, Dubai and Chicago — are on a growth path and eyeing Hartsfield-Jackson’s top perch.
The reduction in Atlanta came as Southwest Airlines and its subsidiary AirTran Airways shrank their presence. Southwest and AirTran together carried about 12.1 million passengers for the year, down from 13.8 million passengers in 2012. That reduced Southwest-AirTran’s market share to 12.8 percent.
Meanwhile, Delta Air Lines carried slightly more passengers and increased its dominance, growing its market share to 80.1 percent including Delta and Delta Connection flights. That’s up from 78.4 percent in 2012.
One area of growth in Hartsfield-Jackson’s results was in international passenger traffic. A total of 10.3 million international passengers used the Atlanta airport in 2013, up 4.1 percent over the previous year.
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