INTERNATIONAL. London Heathrow has been named as the world’s most internationally connected airport in a new report from analyst OAG.
The company ranked the top 50 ‘megahubs’ in the world by calculating the highest ratio of possible scheduled international connections to the number of destinations served by each airport.
Source (all charts): OAG
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Heathrow topped the rankings in the ‘OAG Megahubs International Index 2017’ by a clear margin. On a single day in July, there were over 72,000 possible international connections between flights arriving at the airport and flights departing within a six-hour window.
Frankfurt and Amsterdam Schiphol were ranked second and third respectively, ensuring that the top three places are all leading European hub airports.
Chicago O’Hare and Toronto Pearson rounded out the top five. Twelve of the airports in the Top 50 are in the USA, with seven of these making it into the Top 25.
Istanbul Atatürk, ranked 15th, is second only to Frankfurt in the number of destinations served, with routes to 270 places worldwide.
Singapore Changi is Asia Pacific’s highest ranked International megahub with over 35,000 possible international connections on a single day in July, closely followed by Indonesia’s Soekarno–Hatta International. 16 airports in Asia Pacific appear in the Top 50, including China’s three biggest airports: Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou.
Dubai Airport is the highest ranked airport from Africa and the Middle East, at 20. Although it serves more destinations than Heathrow, the number of international connections was 39,700, slightly over half the number at the London hub.
In Latin America, Mexico City Airport ranked highest for international connectivity, in 21st place. For the first time an airport in the Caribbean – Puerto Rico – made it into the index, at number 46.
Kuala Lumpur Airport, home of AirAsia, came top of the rankings in a separate index of international low-cost connections (see chart below). The next three ranked airports are Soekarno–Hatta, Singapore Changi and Delhi. All are located in South Asia and Southeast Asia, “demonstrating the success of low-cost carriers in meeting international travel needs in the region”, OAG said.
