[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/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.