Top 40 airport rankings: Which ones rose? Which fell?

Kings of the hill
The top three airports on the total air cargo list remain unchanged from the year before – Hong Kong International Airport (HKG) with 4.46 million tonnes, followed by FedEx hub Memphis International (MEM), with 4.29 million tonnes and Shanghai’s Pudong International (PVG), with 3.26 million tonnes. Trans-shipment specialist Anchorage swapped fourth and fifth places with Korea’s Incheon to complete the top five.

“Our community continues to take cargo seriously,” said Mark Whitehead, CEO of Hong Kong Air Terminals, Ltd. (Hactl), the largest cargo operator at HKG. “As the airport’s largest, independent handler, we continue to innovate and invest in systems and people.” Hactl also welcomed several new carriers in the last couple of years, “mostly startups or expanding young carriers,” Whitehead said. “Small customers today are the big names of tomorrow.”

Until Hong Kong gets its planned third runway, Hactl has cooperated with the airport authority to release parking areas to cope with added demand for passenger aircraft use, Whitehead said. “This meant restructuring our freighter handling operations, but our major investment in mobile computing has mitigated the impact on our ramp operations.”

HKG also leads the pack in international freight traffic, holding steady at 4.38 million tonnes. No. 2 on the international list is Dubai International (DXB), which is still an airfreight powerhouse, handling 2.51 million tonnes last year – a 3.4 percent rise over 2014 – even after its freighter traffic was siphoned off to nearby Dubai World Central (DWC), which stands at No. 27, internationally (891.000 tonnes). Incheon is a close No. 3, with 2.49 million metric tonnes in 2015.

For domestic traffic, there is still no one who can beat two of the top integrators, with Memphis dominating at No. 1, handling 4.1 million tonnes of mostly FedEx parcels, followed by UPS’ hub in Louisville at No. 2, which grew 3 percent in 2015 to 1.8 million tonnes. Beijing was, once again, No. 3, domestically, at 1.2 million tonnes – a 3.9 percent increase over 2014. On a regional level, airports in the Asia-Pacific sector handled the lion’s share of the world’s air cargo in 2015, growing by 2.3 percent over 2014 to reach 41.1 million tonnes, followed by North American airports, which saw traffic rise by 3.1 percent to about 30 million tonnes, ACI found (see chart, above).

The fastest growth, however, was found in the Middle Eastern hubs, which expanded their handle by just under 10 percent last year, compared to 2014, with 8.5 million tonnes moved. The Latin America-Caribbean region was the only one to show an annual decline, by 1.3 percent to 4.9 million tonnes due to several extended economic crises in the region.