In busiest airport battle, Atlanta takes top spot. Rival Chicago disagrees.

Atlanta’s 2025 volumes fell slightly below its 2024 total of 108.1 million, as the airport experienced the effects of Southwest Airlines’ decision to cut its Atlanta schedule by a third.

In 2025, however, Atlanta did fall behind its historical nemesis Chicago O’Hare, in terms of total flights. Chicago and Illinois leaders touted the news Tuesday, declaring O’Hare the “nation’s busiest airport.”

That’s even though total passenger volumes have long been seen as the more important figure, including by Chicago.

Decades ago when Atlanta was nipping at Chicago’s heels to establish itself at the top of the “world’s busiest airport” race, Atlanta leaders did the same thing Chicago is doing now.

In 1986, the then-Hartsfield Atlanta International Airport declared victory as the world’s busiest in total flights over Chicago for the year prior.

Chicago dismissed it, emphasizing its own higher passenger volumes.

“Atlanta is claiming victory in the race to have the world’s busiest airport, even if Chicago isn’t paying any attention,” The Atlanta Constitution declared when the figures came out in 1986.

“Not surprisingly, Chicagoans say passenger figures are what matters when ranking airports,” reporter Bert Roughton wrote.

More than a decade later, however, Atlanta would claim and keep the busiest crown for itself.

In a statement late Tuesday, Hartsfield-Jackson General Manager Ricky Smith said the airport is “proud” to see the recognition again in 2025.

“This achievement reflects the strength of Atlanta’s global connectivity, the resilience of our operations, and the dedication of our employees who serve millions of travelers each year. ”

Hartsfield-Jackson has remained the world’s busiest airport by passenger totals since 1998, except in 2020 during COVID-19 when an airport in Guangzhou, China, surpassed it.

Atlanta’s all-time record remains 110 million annual passengers in 2019, but airport leaders expect to hit an annual mark of 125 million passengers within the next five years.

And whether Atlanta remains the world’s busiest in the years ahead is largely beyond its control, Smith said in an interview last year.

Cities across the world including Dubai and Istanbul are building “mega-airports” with capacities Atlanta has no plans to achieve itself.

“If we fall to No. 2, it won’t be because the city, the region … changed,” Smith said. “It’s because something happened in Europe or the Middle East, something we have no control over.”

Similarly, Atlanta had little control over the reason for its decline in passenger volumes last year, driven by Southwest’s own business decisions.

Southwest had been the second-largest carrier in Atlanta after acquiring AirTran Airways more than a decade ago. In 2024 it flew nearly 8 million passengers in and out of Atlanta — about 7% of total volumes.

But last year that total was down to under 5 million passengers and Southwest narrowly fell behind Frontier Airlines into the No. 3 spot among Atlanta carriers with just 4.7% of volumes. Frontier had 4.9%.

The Dallas-based airline has been under increasing pressure to improve its financial performance, particularly exacerbated by manufacturing delays with its aircraft supplier, Boeing.

Atlanta-based Delta Air Lines and its subsidiary continued to represent about 79% of the Atlanta airport’s 2025 traffic.