Busiest domestic-only airport?
What is the busiest domestic airport?
By domestic airport, I mean an airport where:
- all scheduled or charter flights are domestic, and
- the airport must not have any customs and immigration facilities for commercial flights (so it would not be possible to charter a plane to land there).
I don't know about customs and immigration for general aviation only.
For example:
- New York LaGuardia (LGA) or Washington-National (DCA) do not count; despite the absence of customs and immigration, they have international flights from Canada with customs preclearance;
- An airport in Germany or France lacking customs and immigration but having flights to only Schengen destinations does not count, because some of the Schengen destinations are in other countries.
By busiest, I mean largest number of passengers.
18 out of 20 busiest air routes in the world are domestic routes, but the world's busiest airports all serve many international flights. I would expect the busiest domestic-only airport in the world to be an airport in a large and populous country such as China, India, United States, Indonesia, Brazil, or Russia.
Contenders in the USA might be DAL, OMA, BOI, LIH, or MSN, which appear to have no scheduled international destinations, although it's not clear to me whether they meet the second criterion.
Best Answer
According to Wikipedia, São Paulo–Congonhas Airport served over 21 million passengers in 2017. It used to be international, but
Since the opening of Guarulhos Airport in 1985, international flights no longer operate from Congonhas (...) In 2008 Congonhas lost its international category.
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What is the busiest domestic airport in the world?
Hartsfield Jackson Facts:Hartsfield-Jackson Atlantic International Airport has been the busiest passenger airport in the world since 1998.What are the 4 busiest airports?
The top 10 busiest airports in the world by passenger number- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL) ...
- Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport (DFW) ...
- Denver International Airport (DEN) ...
- Chicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD) ...
- Los Angeles International Airport (LAX)
Which airport is the busiest by passenger volume?
2021 statisticsRankAirportTotal passengers1.Hartsfield\u2013Jackson Atlanta International Airport75,537,2132.Dallas Fort Worth International Airport62,465,7563.Denver International Airport58,828,5524.O'Hare International Airport54,020,39931 more rowsWhat airport has the busiest runway?
Acting as the primary international airport serving Atlanta, Hartsfield\u2013Jackson Atlanta International Airport is the busiest airport in the world by passenger number and is one of the busiest by aircraft movements.Most busiest domestic airport in the world 4K
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Answer 2
This is now only of historical interest, but for a brief period between April 18, 2002 and November 30, 2003, after all Taiwan flights were moved to Narita but before shuttle flights to Seoul started, Tokyo-Haneda Airport HND served only domestic flights. With 62,876,182 passengers in 2003, this was and is almost certainly the busiest purely domestic airport the world has ever seen. (Even after subtracting those Seoul shuttle passengers from that figure: at a peak of 8 flights/day, on narrowbody aircraft with a capacity of around 150 people, we're looking at 40k tops for the one month they operated.)
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_busiest_airports_in_Japan
Answer 3
Since China was mentioned in the OP, I took a look at the busiest airports in China. The busiest one without "International" in its name appears to be Zhuhai, with 11.2M passengers passing through in 2018. This makes it the 35th busiest airport in China.
I also looked at airports higher up on the list. Airports #21–34 all appear to have at least one international flight according to flightconnections.com. I didn't bother looking at the 20 most busy airports, since it seemed obvious to me that they were major cities with international connections; but it's possible I missed one.
Answer 4
Another interesting case is Simferopol SIP (and Ercan ECN by the same principle).
Due to the lack of international recognition of Crimea as part of Russia it can only logically offer routes to Russia, with annual passenger traffic of 5M pax/yr.
Please note it's low season currently.
Answer 5
Of non-trivial examples, consider Tehran Mehrabad THR. I expect it actually has international terminals to be used during Hajj, but not year round.
Wikipedia lists around 17M pax/yr.
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