Best Run Airports in the World

The largest international airport in Switzerland handled more than 31 million passengers in 2018 — or about 85,000 people a day — a 5.8% increase from the previous year. On average, 763 flights landed or departed from Zurich Airport every day last year, a 3.0% increase from 2017. The airport served a total of 77 scheduled and charter airlines.

Narita Airport is the busiest airport in Japan handling international travelers. Last year alone, it managed more than 116,000 passengers a day — passenger traffic at the airport has been increasinging steadily every year since at least 2013. The majority of the airport’s traffic is from international flights. The airport operated nearly 203,000 international flights last year, nearly four times as many as domestic flights.

Heathrow has only two runways and four terminals, but it effectively handles 84 airlines with a combined 475,000 flights a year. More than 80 million passengers — 67.0% of whom were travelling for leisure — landed or took off from Heathrow.

One day, they may fly from London to New York City, one of the most popular international flights, in just 90 minutes, as opposed to seven hours. A plane that can fly five times faster than the speed of sound is in the works. Let’s hope this one doesn’t fail like the ill-fated Concorde, which operated between the 1970s and 1990s and could fly at roughly twice the speed of sound.

Munich Airport, the second busiest in Germany, handles more and more passengers every year. In 2018, 46.3 million people had gone through the airport, an increase of 3.8% over the previous year. The number of daily flights has been going up as well, every year since 2014, to 413 a day in 2018. The airport works with 106 airlines, flying to 264 countries.

Considering Centair’s location in the middle of Japan, most of the flights that the airport handles are domestic. The airport has 65 apron stands, which is where airplanes are parked or boarded. More than 50 airlines — both big and small — use the airport. It handled 12 million passengers in 2018, a 9.0% increase from 2017.

Hong Kong International Airport (HKIA) opened in 1998 and since then it has grown to service more than 74 million passengers in 2018, connecting to 220 destinations all over the world. The airport has won the Airport of the Year title at the World Airport Awards several times. With hundreds of shops and restaurants, as well as about 43,000 flights a year, HKIA is a major employer. More than 73,000 people work there.

Hamad International Airport is still fairly new. It opened just five years ago. It handles about 30 million passengers flying on more than 360,000 flights every year. The airport’s aircraft movement capacity is five planes landing or taking off every three minutes. Hamad’s maintenance hangar is the largest in the world — it can store as many as 13 planes at a time.

South Korea’s largest airport is the seventh busiest in the world in terms of the volume of international passengers, according to the Airport Council International (ACI). In 2017 alone, the airport managed 360,000 flights, carrying 62 million passengers, an increase of 7.5% over 2016. The airport also managed 2.9 million tons of cargo, up 7.6% since the previous year. Incheon works with 90 airlines flying to and from 188 cities.

Haneda airport is one of two primary airports near Japan’s capital. The airport manages about 500 flights a day. Every year, about 60 million passengers fly through Haneda. While most of the flights are domestic, airlines fly out regularly to major cities in Europe, North America, Middle East, and other countries in Asia.

Changi Airport has been adding between 3 million and 4 million more passengers a year since 2015. Last year, passenger traffic reached 65 million; from January until March 2019, over 16 million people have gone through there. Changi serves about 100 airlines that fly to 400 cities all over the world. Every week, about 100 airlines make more than 7,400 flights to and from Changi.