Was wondering which airports are the most overcrowded. Also was wondering which airports are expanding the most to try to get capture this demand.

LAX, SFO, SEA, BOM,

LHR, LAX, SFO, SEA, BOM, DXB, FRA, EWR, ORD, AMS, IST (soon to be replaced), CGK (Jakarta-exampanding), BKK, SUB (Indonesia), MAA, MNL (yet somehow grows), MEX, NRT, PEK, TXL

JFK, HND, SYD, MUC, and soon GRU have run out of slots when people most want to fly (when they will pay a premium to fly).
ATL is short of gates during Delta hub waves


If an airport has limited time slots, it makes it difficult to connect to another airport with limited slots, unless a major airline is willing to move around their slots.

Expansion is short.
ATL is talking a 6th runway.
BKK should grow to 4 runways
Navi Mumbai will offload BOM
The New Beijing airport at Daxing will be huge!
The New Istanbul airport is scheduled to open in October
Jakarta is getting a 3rd runway and a large (properly sized) new terminal
Mexico city is building a new airport due in 2021
One day BER airport will open (I'll believe it when I see it)

In many cities, businesses just have to use alternate airports or grow less.

Dallas Love Field

AMS is not full. It’s capped due to politics.

LAX is certainly not full from operational point of view. It does not even have slots.

Some terminals might be tight but thats more an issue with individual tenants.

AUS is rapidly getting to its limit. Must be one of the most "full" non-hub/focus city airports in the country. It's been very well documented here (see: DL expansion talks) its current and future capacity.

(Wait, did I just accidentally bring up AUS and hub status in yet another thread? Sorry y'all, I'll see myself out...)

Are we talking about crowding or slots?

Slots i'd say LHR, HKG & BOM are the top 3, all 3 airports almost always have aircraft holding inbound

LAX is not full operationally but is often more than full gate-wise. That should improve somewhat in coming years.

hooverman wrote:

AMS is not full. It’s capped due to politics.

Let's be honest, terminal space is also an issue. We've seen that the current terminal cannot handle peak traffic last year. Moreover, a political limit remains a limit.

I personally think CJU is probably the densest airport in the world.
Small terminal with hundreds of flights coming and going each hour, it's really packed to the gills.
The government is even considering building a second airport in the island to split the air traffic.

https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/nation ... 51744.html

SEA (Seattle/Tacoma)

hooverman wrote:

AMS is not full. It’s capped due to politics.

So it’s full.

Definitely Lima,Peru. They have a lot of operations for a single runway airport.

ORD has a gate capacity problem. The airfield is fine operationally. If all goes according to plan, ORD should get removed from the max capacity list in 2026 or sooner.

mast2407 wrote:

hooverman wrote:

AMS is not full. It’s capped due to politics.

So it’s full.

The OP was talking about overcrouded and since there are periods of the day there are plenty of gates empty its not full.
If there where no political limits many more planes could be handled at these periods.
Its not like LHR that is full because it cannot handle more planes due to runway limits.
Thats how I read the question.

You all in Europe and Asia out slots of everything. You aren’t even that busy!

SCL, specially in high season and morning rush hour, though it's being expanded and due to be finished by 2020

hooverman wrote:

AMS is not full. It’s capped due to politics.

True, but it still means AMS is walking on its last leggs with regard to growth possibilities, unless the strict rules are abandoned. The Dutch governement does not allow any growth anymore, it is a huge discussion. So with that given it is full, for now.

Luton, it's one of the busiest airports in the UK despite being absolutely tiny and there are regularly queues for the runway.

NearMiss wrote:

SCL, specially in high season and morning rush hour, though it's being expanded and due to be finished by 2020

I think you would mean SLC

Edinburgh, definitely needs to expand at some point.

From top of my mind, LIS (full to the brims), PEK, SYD (almost), (SHA), I was going to say ATL, but already mentioned (what's exactly the situation there?)...

Probably more elsewhere..

Please correct or comment if necessary.

Thanks..

Regards.

B8887

So LGW with its single runway still has capacity to expand?...very surprising...


Faro

jubguy3 wrote:

NearMiss wrote:

SCL, specially in high season and morning rush hour, though it's being expanded and due to be finished by 2020

I think you would mean SLC

Haha I actually did mean SCL. You should see how overcrowded the terminal is during peak season (Winter and summer vacations) and the morning rush hour. Hopefully, the expansions and new terminals will be a welcome solution.

Q6fan wrote:

Definitely Lima,Peru. They have a lot of operations for a single runway airport.

Well, yes, but only if you don't compare it to a really busy single-runway airport. In 2017 Lima saw around 22M passengers; Gatwick saw closer to 46M.

Perspective, gentlemen, perspective!

Based on what metrics? or at least define what capacity is being used as the measure.

Two top my list where the airport is at full capacity (using slots) over 97% on a continuous basis; LHR and AMS. These are what would be considered Super Congested within IATA level 3 Airports.

KWI is apparently operating well above its capacity.

paulduwon wrote:

I personally think CJU is probably the densest airport in the world.
Small terminal with hundreds of flights coming and going each hour, it's really packed to the gills.
The government is even considering building a second airport in the island to split the air traffic.

https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/nation ... 51744.html

From the article: "Currently, planes depart from and arrive at Jeju International Airport 35 times an hour."

There is a big difference between 35 movements per hour and "hundreds of flights coming and going each hour". Did you mean hundreds of flights per day?

LIS 100% full capacity

Shanghai/Beijing/Hong Kong.

The ultimate design capacity of the existing HKG Dual-rwy system is 420,000 movement/yr, and in 2017 the total movement there was 420,630.

YLWbased

LHR airlines should use larger aircraft if it want to lift passenger numbers over the next five years. There are too many A319s, mostly BA filling slots that could grow to A321NEO eventually. Some LHR-EU routes could support less frequency and more WB aircraft at peak times.

MEX is about 40% over capacity as well

KEF. That place is far beyond how many people pass through it. It may *only* serve 8 million passengers, which seems like not too many compared to a lot of other airports, but that terminal is way too small for that many people, banks or no banks.

CYYZ is currently operating well beyond (~15% more pax than the terminals were ever designed to handle) it's ultimate design capacity in it's current configuration, though there are provisions for expansion.

YVR is pretty tight gate wise, though they have a wonderfully spacious terminal which mitigates the crowding. CYUL is woefully undersized currently, but I think seasonality has a fair role in how crowded it can get.

hooverman wrote:

AMS is not full. It’s capped due to politics.

Well by that definition any airport with a curfew is "not full" by default.

This won't make me friends on here, but isn't time we have fewer flights, larger aircraft, and gulp - high speed trains between some cities (at least in the US)?

PlaneBoo wrote:

Edinburgh, definitely needs to expand at some point.

It is expanding already:

https://www.airliners.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1371551

Silverstreak wrote:

This won't make me friends on here, but isn't time we have fewer flights, larger aircraft, and gulp - high speed trains between some cities (at least in the US)?

As you probably know, there is high-speed train service on the Northeast Corridor connecting Boston, New York, Newark, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington DC. It isn't high-speed by Japanese or European standards, but it does exist. A big issue is that the route was built up during the 19th and early 20th centuries by independent railroads and originally carried express and local passenger trains and freight trains. The freights are mostly gone from this route, at least in NJ, but local service (commuter lines) remain and the expresses mingle with them. Because of political pressures, brand new passenger lines can't be built without individual state agreement to have sections of their land torn up for that purpose, especially if the new service won't stop in that state.

Back in the 1940s and 50s the federal government threw a lot of resources into development of airports and related infrastructure, often at the expense of railroads. Thus rail traffic declined and air traffic increased leading to today's situation.

One thing that hasn't been mentioned is increased telecommuting so one doesn't have to travel to as much. There are communications software available to be able to connect anywhere on earth. I like having face-to-face interactions, but sometimes they just aren't feasible.

YVR is investing $9.1 billion CAD into the airport to meet future passenger growth.

http://www.yvr.ca/en/media/news-release ... n-projects

Without reviving the debate about the abandoned Notre-Dame-des-Landes project, I wonder if NTE has reached or exceeded its design capacity in 2017. Traffic was up +14.9% with almost 5.5M pax.

whywhyzee wrote:

CYYZ is currently operating well beyond (~15% more pax than the terminals were ever designed to handle) it's ultimate design capacity in it's current configuration, though there are provisions for expansion.

Really? I was under the impression that YYZ hits capacity at 50 million. They might hit capacity this year, as shown by the activation of the in-field terminal.

BEY. Operating overcapacity since 2015, and despite constant work and improvements the terminal cannot keep up with the traffic. Two new terminals planned, first to begin construction by end 2019.

wave46 wrote:

whywhyzee wrote:

CYYZ is currently operating well beyond (~15% more pax than the terminals were ever designed to handle) it's ultimate design capacity in it's current configuration, though there are provisions for expansion.

Really? I was under the impression that YYZ hits capacity at 50 million. They might hit capacity this year, as shown by the activation of the in-field terminal.

I seem to recall the ultimate capacity was closer to 40 million with the current configuration, though I could be wrong. The IFT does alleviate this, but it really isn't part of the long term solution, it's a temporary fix due to unforeseen demand levels.

In any case, numbers this year should be ~50 million plus minus 500K, and we still don't have any real solution for 2019, which should hit 53 million.

This will be relieved this month as new gates open but you could add CLT to the gate constrained list. Operationally, there's still room, but terminal wise, very tight.

In the USA, the most obvious ones are: JFK, LGA, EWR, DCA, and SFO. SFO is likely going to get FAA slot restrictions soon, while JFK, LGA, and DCA (along with EWR until recently) are all slot restricted by the FAA. JFK has a cap of 83 movements per hour, while LGA and DCA are capped at 71 and 62, respectively.

LAXintl wrote:

LAX is certainly not full from operational point of view.

Unless it grows dramatically in connecting traffic or a new common-use remote check-in terminal that can shuttle people via airside transport gets built, I would say the horseshoe is well beyond capacity. Hope the APM construction doesn't make it worse.

LIS, hardly has any space to park aircraft or to get slots!
LATAM struggled to get the frequency and scheduled they were after.
easyJet has also said in the past they would like more slots.

PTY has been running over 100% capacity in the last 5 years. But a new terminal is expected to be 100% operational next year adding 20 extra gates and there are other planned projects such as a third runway.