r/dataisbeautiful • u/latinometrics OC: 73 • 9d ago
OC [OC] 🛄 Annual passenger numbers at Latin America's busiest airports
🛫 🇨🇴 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/FoQualla 9d ago
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.