fchotels/world-busiest-airports-dataset

World's Busiest Airports Dataset: Passenger Traffic, Rankings & History (1932–2026)

A curated, source-linked airport statistics dataset covering final 2025 global rankings, a documented history of the world's No. 1 passenger airport, and the latest available preliminary H1 2026 international passenger update.

Research article: What Is the Busiest Airport in the World? Publisher: Find Cheap Hotels Related analysis: Is Heathrow the Busiest Airport in the World?

Dataset summary

The dataset separates different definitions of “busiest airport” rather than combining unlike measures.

The H1 2026 international figures are preliminary, rounded and subject to final validation. They are stored separately from the final full-year 2025 files.

Dataset Viewer configurations

The YAML metadata at the top of this Dataset Card defines these independent configurations:

• —all_observations — combined tidy table and default configuration
• —overall_passenger_traffic_2025 — final 2025 overall passenger top 10
• —international_passenger_traffic_2025 — final 2025 international passenger top 10
• —cargo_traffic_2025 — final 2025 cargo top 10
• —aircraft_movements_2025 — final 2025 aircraft movements top 10
• —international_passenger_traffic_h1_2026 — preliminary H1 2026 international top three
• —busiest_airport_title_history — documented No. 1 title periods from 1932–2025
• —metric_leaders_2025 — 2025 leader for each major metric
• —current_metric_leaders — latest comparable leader by metric as of 14 August 2026
• —airports — airport reference table
• —source_register — provenance and source-status table

Why the 2026 data is separate

The latest final full-year global ranking covers 2025. The H1 2026 international ranking is newer, but it covers only January through June and was still preliminary when this release was checked on 14 August 2026.

The repository distinguishes:

• —final — confirmed full-year ranking data;
• —preliminary — newer partial-period data that may still change;
• —documented historical title period — historical title sequence based on official airport histories and modern rankings.

Do not compare H1 2026 values with full-year 2025 values as though they cover the same period.

Final-versus-preliminary rule

Where earlier preliminary 2025 figures differ from the final July 2026 ACI public table, this dataset uses the final July 2026 values.

Examples include:

• —Shanghai Pudong overall passenger traffic: 84,994,548
• —Chicago O'Hare overall passenger traffic: 84,856,018
• —Hong Kong international passenger traffic: 60,810,724

Historical title sequence

The historical file records a documented title sequence rather than claiming to be a reconstructed year-by-year ACI database back to 1932.

• —1932–1961: Chicago Municipal Airport / Midway
• —1962–1997: Chicago O'Hare
• —1998–2019: Atlanta
• —2020: Guangzhou Baiyun
• —2021–2025: Atlanta

For the reasoning, historical source choices and differences between airport metrics, see the accompanying world's busiest airport research article.

Sources

Each researched table contains source fields, and source_register.csv centralises provenance.

The source hierarchy is:

1. 1.final public tables from Airports Council International World;
2. 2.official airport statistics and official airport histories;
3. 3.preliminary ACI figures clearly labelled as preliminary;
4. 4.reputable secondary reporting where the current preliminary comparison was not yet available as a final public ACI table.

See METHODOLOGY.md and source_register.csv for the detailed source record.

Suggested uses

This dataset is suitable for airport ranking analysis, aviation and travel statistics projects, charts and visualisations, historical comparisons, reproducible research examples, and CSV/data-analysis tutorials.

It should not be used to infer operational safety, airport quality, financial performance or future traffic without additional data.

Loading with Hugging Face Datasets

Default combined table:

from datasets import load_dataset

dataset = load_dataset("YOUR-HUGGING-FACE-USERNAME/world-busiest-airports-dataset")

Specific configuration:

from datasets import load_dataset

overall = load_dataset(
    "YOUR-HUGGING-FACE-USERNAME/world-busiest-airports-dataset",
    "overall_passenger_traffic_2025"
)

Replace YOUR-HUGGING-FACE-USERNAME with the account or organisation that publishes the dataset.

Citation

If you use this curated dataset, cite:

Porter, Rory (2026). _World's Busiest Airports Dataset: Passenger Traffic, Rankings & History (1932–2026)._ Find Cheap Hotels.

Research context: What Is the Busiest Airport in the World?

Reuse and source rights

This is an independently curated summary of publicly reported airport ranking observations. It does not redistribute ACI World's complete paid airport traffic database.

Underlying third-party statistics, publications and trademarks remain subject to the rights and terms of their original publishers. See LICENSE_NOTICE.md.

Publisher

Published by Find Cheap Hotels as part of its travel-statistics research.