[OC] 🛄 Annual passenger numbers at Latin America's busiest airports

[u/latinometrics]

🛫 🇨🇴 Bogotá just dethroned São Paulo and Mexico City to become Latin America's busiest airport... here's what changed ↓

In Latin America, we increasingly catch flights, not feelings. 746M passengers flew Latin America & Caribbean routes last year, an +86M boost since 2019.

More of us caught flights through Bogota's El Dorado airport than any other airport in the region—marking a shift from the Brazilian and Mexican dominance of decades past.

No single terminal felt the surge more than Bogotá-El Dorado. The Colombian hub processed 45.4 million travelers, edging past Mexico City (44.9 M) and São Paulo-Guarulhos (43.1 M) to become the region's busiest airport for the first time. Geography helps: Bogotá sits midway between the Americas, so Avianca and LATAM have built spider-web networks that pull in connections to the US and Europe.

Tourism to Colombia has also recovered remarkably, with a 58% increase since pre-pandemic (2019) numbers.

Similar explanations can also account for the top-ten positions of both Lima and Panama City, which have become key points of transfer for inter-American flight paths. Panama and Lima, in part, replaced Mexico City's grand plans to connect the region after President López Obrador infamously canceled a new airport project during his first month in office back in 2018.

story continues... 💌

Tools: Figma, Rawgraphs

Source: List of the busiest airports in Latin America - Wikipedia

[u/just_start_doing_it]

Surprised Buenos Aires isn't on here.

[u/runehawk12 → u/just_start_doing_it]

Same, it seems they have two airports (Aeroparque Jorge Newbery and Ministro Pistarini International Airport), both with 10M+ passengers, which makes it so neither shows up in the top 10.

[u/just_start_doing_it → u/runehawk12]

Even then it is Panama City levels...

[u/runehawk12 → u/just_start_doing_it]

Well it's around 26M so more in line with Santiago and Lima, but I do agree that it is surprisingly low. Maybe because it's mostly national flights and most of the population is already concentrated near the capital?

Central and northern South America are often used for connections in the northern hemisphere, like the example of Bogotá.

[u/FoQualla]

Bogota is a very nice airport. Was clean, modern, and world-class like DXB or DOH. It's jarring to be dumped off at the third-world slum that is Miami International after being at BOG.

[u/joaovitorxc → u/FoQualla]

Yes. I was there last year and, besides not having a good experience with Avianca, enjoyed visiting BOG quite a bit.

The difference between the airports in Bogotá and Caracas (CCS, which used to be the gold standard in Latin America) is night and day now.

[u/NEW_SPECIES_OF_FECES → u/FoQualla]

Bogota renovated their airport several years ago, helped really scale it up as a nicer airport.

[u/sharkflood → u/FoQualla]

Miami airport's new side is nice.

Their old side is trash.

But FLL is somehow worse.

[u/thisisnahamed → u/FoQualla]

I have flown out of there a few times. They keep expanding.

[u/TheFlyingBoat → u/FoQualla]

Well, it's in Florida...what else would you expect.

[u/sharkflood → u/TheFlyingBoat]

Ironically West Palm Beach has one of the nicest airports in the country.

Miami's isn't that bad tbh. The old side sucks but the new side is actually kinda nice. Your experience will differ vastly depending on where your plane offloads.

Bogota has a nice airport though but I wouldn't say it's anything special globally. Source: live in Colombia and am from Florida.

[u/tripsd → u/FoQualla]

Bogota is the home to 3 of my least favorite flying experiences of my life

[u/ipenama]

Strange that Mexico City doesn't have a distinction of airport just like Sao Paulo; numbers for CDMX on this chart only consider MEX. Reason for reduction in passengers compared to 2019 is due to a series of decrees which limited hourly operations on domestic flights from 61 to 43, last of those was enacted in January 2024. The vast majority of people just migrated to NLU and a small percentage went for TLC.
After NAIM cancellation, a system of multiple airports was brought to life again (known as Sistema Aéreo Metropolitano, SAM) where AIFA was the new player here. Counting all four terminals, Mexico City served 52.9 million passengers in 2024, distributed like this:
MEX - 45.3
NLU - 6.3
TLC - 1.3

[u/ownage516]

I've been to Medellin twice over the past 3 years so I believe I had a hand in this

[u/Joaolandia]

Avianca becoming a budget airline helped a lot

[u/ozneoknarf]

But misleading. Bogotá has 2 airports with 48 million passagens total. São Paulo has 2 with 65 million passengers and if you count vira copos in Campinas it’s over 77 million passengers. 

[u/Realityhrts → u/ozneoknarf]

What other airport besides El Dorado does Bogota have?

[u/eamesa → u/Realityhrts]

One private one in Guaymaral. Puente Aereo used to be Avianca's private terminal but it's now part of El Dorado as T2

[u/SkyNetHatesUsAll → u/eamesa]

They have no idea what you’re talking about.

Guaymaral is used for flying schools. No more than 500 “passengers” per month .

El puente aéreo , was a terminal. But not a second airport .

I wonder what other airport they’re taking about .

[u/sharkflood → u/ozneoknarf]

Nah Bogota has one main international airport: El Dorado

[u/simcitymayor]

Is there a cost savings in not having to descend as much for a landing?

[u/runehawk12]

Pretty cool to see Bogotá jumping up so much, they are definitely super well located for it.

Between Guarulhos and Congonhas, it seems São Paulo is still the most busy airspace, which isn't surprising.

What is surprising is that a few brazilian airports' activity haven't grown much (or even shrunk) - Brasília apparently peaked in flights in 2015 according to the wikipedia page.

[u/maxdacat]

Crazy that Argentina is not in the top 10

[u/thisisnahamed → u/maxdacat]

Because it's not as popular as many people think. They had also pretty much shut themselves out economically for most part. Now they are reopening business.

Plus Brazil has a population of 210 million, while Argentina has less than 50 million.

[u/BobLoblaw_BirdLaw → u/maxdacat]

Why would they be. They’re further south than most people realize.

[u/maxdacat → u/BobLoblaw_BirdLaw]

But Chile is in "Latin America" apparently

[u/sharkflood → u/maxdacat]

Makes sense they'd be low given where theyre located

[u/Sea-Limit-5430]

Damn, my cities airport would rank as the 9th busiest in Latin America.

I would’ve expected more busy airports

[u/thisisnahamed]

It looks like the drop in Guarulhos in Sao Paulo is because they now have two airports. It's crazy they have two of the busiest airports in the Top 10.

[u/BobLoblaw_BirdLaw]

Brazil enacting a visa for Americans isn’t helping

[u/pulyx → u/BobLoblaw_BirdLaw]

Just Reciprocity law. For decades the US always made the visa acquirement process unnecessarily humiliating for a lot of Brazilians. Brazil is still very easy to get a visa for americans. Just an extra hoop to jump. You'd have to be a serial killer to have your application refused.