r/dataisbeautiful • u/latinometrics OC: 73 • 9d ago

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

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🛫 🇨🇴 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

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u/just_start_doing_it 8d ago

Surprised Buenos Aires isn't on here.

17

u/runehawk12 8d ago

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.

5

u/just_start_doing_it 8d ago

Even then it is Panama City levels...

7

u/runehawk12 8d ago

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.