OAG Travel News

Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport held on to the title of the USA's busiest airport in terms of aircraft operations, even though its 2008 activity was down from a year earlier, The Associated Press reports. "It was the fourth year in a row Hartsfield-Jackson grabbed the bragging rights, coming in ahead of Chicago O'Hare to remain in first place," The Atlanta Journal-Constitution adds. "The Federal Aviation Administration said Friday the airport led the country in 2008 in takeoffs and landings, with 978,084 last year — a drop of about 1% from 2007," AP writes.

That's also likely enough to give Atlanta the title of world's busiest (by operations). The Journal-Constitution writes "the FAA does not measure flight activities for international airports, but preliminary estimates from Airports Council International confirm that Hartsfield-Jackson will be the world's busiest airport in terms of operations for 2008 as well as the busiest in numbers of passengers flown."

As for Chicago, AP says the FAA report "shows traffic at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport has fallen to its lowest level in at least 15 years. The FAA says O'Hare saw 881,556 arrivals and departures in 2008. That's a nearly 5% drop from the 926,973 recorded the year before. The report included statistics dating back to 1994, when arrivals and departures at O'Hare added to 882,112. The numbers peaked in 2004 at 992,471, and declined each year since." And across town at Midway Airport, aircraft operations there have dropped to the lowest level since 1997.