tl;dr – Has Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport really lost the throne?
There’s a new ‘busiest’ airport in the US – depending on who you ask. According to preliminary data from the Federal Aviation Administration, Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport has eclipsed Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport based on 2025 flight data tracking aircraft landing and taking off from airports. Last year, Chicago saw 857,392 aircrafts landing or taking off – a 10.5% increase from its 2024 numbers.
Atlanta ranked second with 807,625 take-offs-and-landings. Does this mean that Chicago’s stolen the title of the ‘busiest airport in the United States’?
Not so fast, says Atlanta. Officials at Atlanta’s airport dispute Chicago’s claim, pointing to data from the Airports Council International, which ranks Hartsfield-Jackson (and Chicago’s O’Hare 8th) in terms of passenger traffic. The ACI’s 2025 data has yet to be released, but in 2024, Atlanta saw 108.1 million passengers while O’Hare counted 80 million. Over the years, when articles/lists/reports have bestowed the title ‘nation’s busiest airport’ or ‘world’s busiest airports’, it’s almost always been based on passenger traffic or passenger capacity figures. Passenger traffic is the metric the Official Airline Guide (OAG) relies upon to determine the world’s busiest airports in its annual survey.
With that being said, don’t try to rain on the parade of the people of Chicago.
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson has been quick to praise his city on the honor, saying, “This is more than a statistic, it’s a statement about Chicago’s momentum…From the runways of O’Hare to the neighborhoods across our city, Chicago is building, growing, and leading. We are open for business, open to the world, and once again setting the pace for the nation.”
