A major surprise in Asia: the region's busiest international airport in 2020 is now Seoul Incheon in Korea. The platform has dethroned Hong KongIt is now probably the fourth, if not the fifth largest international airport on the continent.
The first figures from Asia's airports are coming in one after the other. Incheon welcomed 11.96 million passengers last yearThis represents a fall of 83.1% compared with 2020. But its status as an international hub has made it Asia's leading intercontinental hub. History is repeating itself at Singapore, Southeast Asia's leading international airport. In 2020, the hub will handle a total of 11.8 million passengers, down 82.8%.
The Hong Kong hub in disarray
However, it is Bangkok which remained the busiest airport - outside China - in terms of passenger numbers on the continent in 2020. Last year, Suvarnabhumi welcomed more than 16.7 million passengers.down 74.1%.
But traffic has collapsed on its international routes. Thailand's biggest hub will have seen 9.87 million passengers pass through on international routes. The fall was nonetheless vertiginous, at minus 81.5%.
In fact, Bangkok is hot on the heels of Tokyo-Naritawhose traffic is almost exclusively international. The Japanese airport will have handled 9.7 million passengers by 2020This represents a decline of 74% on the previous year.
However, it is Hong Kong which has suffered the most among the major airports. The platform had already seen a fall in traffic in 2019 because of anti-government demonstrations on its territory. But it has grown over the last year. Hong Kong Chek Lap Kok passenger traffic down to 8.83 milliona decline of 87.7%. The hub appears to have lost its role as an international hub for North-East Asia.
This is obviously Mainland China which will have best maintained airport activity in 2020, thanks to a relatively good level of domestic traffic.
According to data from the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC), Chinese airlines transported 4.62 billion passengers last year. The country confirms its position as the world's largest aviation market.
Chinese airports now the world's largest
As for China's airports, they now rank among the world's largest. world's top 20 air hubs by 2020. Guangzhou (Canton) has just been proclaimed the world's busiest airport, with 43.77 million passengers.. In fact, the airport posted a decline of "only" 40.4% compared with 2019. But this resilience is due solely to domestic traffic. Internationally, 86% of passengers disappeared in 2020. On its official Weibo site, the airport attributed its good performance to "China's ability to effectively control the pandemic".
The airport of Shenzhen was the second largest in China in 20020. On the border with Hong Kong, the hub handled 37.92 million passengers last year, down 28.4 % on 2019.
Other major airports such as Chengdu, Beijing Capital International and Shanghai Pudong International are likely to be among the world's top 10 airports in 2020, each with more than 30 million passengers. In reality, however, these airports have all lost international traffic as a result of the government shutdown. They would probably be among the worst affected airports in the world in terms of losses on international flights.
