For years, Chicago loved to boast that O’Hare International Airport was the "world’s busiest."
For some time, that has no longer been true, but in the last year, the numbers remained relatively flat.
New data from the U.S. Department of Transportation shows passenger traffic at O’Hare was nearly flat, down last year by just 0.4 percent. The airport had 878,798 operations, down from 882,617 operations in 2010.
That year, 2010 had been a good year for O’Hare, a leap of nearly 55,000 flights over 2009 levels.
If there was a silver lining for Chicago, it was the fact that the city currently in first place, Atlanta, saw its numbers decline by an even bigger margin. Atlanta’s Hartsfield International dropped by 2.7 percent, with 923,991 operations, compared to 950,119 the year before.
Dallas-Fort Worth was in third place, followed by Denver International. In fifth place, Los Angeles International actually saw its traffic increase by 4.9 percent.
Chicago’s Midway Airport came in at 27th. Passenger traffic at Midway was up 3.9 percent last year.
