The World's Fastest Growing Airports - An Excerpt

Istanbul tops list of world's fastest-growing airports
- An Excerpt

AFP Relax – Tue, Aug 2, 2011
Istanbul's Sabiha Gökçen Airport is the world's fastest growing airport, according to a new report released by Airports Council International (ACI) August 1.
The World Airport Traffic Report 2010, which analyzed the performance of over 1,300 airports in 157 countries around the world last year, suggests that traffic at Istanbul's Sabiha Gökçen Airport, completed in 2009, jumped by 75 percent last year.
That puts it considerably ahead of Campinas in Brazil, the world's second-fastest growing airport, and Rio de Janeiro, the third.
Charleroi in Belgium and Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport rounded off the top five list.
Overall, traffic through the world's airports grew by 6.6 percent in 2010, the report shows, a total of 5.04 billion passengers -- the first time global air travel has passed the 5 billion mark.
The fastest growth was observed in Latin America and the Caribbean (13.2 percent), ACI said, followed by the Middle East (12 percent), Asia-Pacific (11.3 percent) Africa (9.5 percent), Europe (4.3 percent) and North America (2.5 percent).
Preliminary statistics show that for the first six months of this year, global passenger traffic is up by six percent again.
The busiest airports in the world overall were Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson in the US, Beijing, Chicago in the US, London Heathrow and Tokyo Haneda.
However, stripping out domestic passengers to include just international travel, London Heathrow holds the top spot, followed by Paris Charles de Gaulle, Hong Kong International, Dubai International in the United Arab Emirates and Frankfurt in Germany.
The world's fastest-growing airports
1. Istanbul Sabiha Gökçen Airport, Turkey
2. Viracopos-Campinas, Brazil
3. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
4. Charleroi, Belgium
5. Moscow Sheremetyevo, Russia
6. Belo Horizonte, Brazil
7. Bogota, Colombia
8. Phuket, Thailand
9. Shanghai Pudong, China
10. Muscat, Oman
11. Ankara, Turkey
12. St Petersburg, Russia
13. Medan, Indonesia
14. Shanghai Hongqiao, China
15. Milwaukee, WI, USA
Data from Airports Council International - http://www.airports.org/