Atlanta 's enormous airport is still the busiest passenger airport in the world . More than 95 million passengers passed through Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport in 2012 , an increase of 3.4 % over the previous year , according to Airports Council International 's 2012 World Annual Traffic Report , released Monday . Beijing Capital International Airport came in second place , with nearly 82 million passengers last year , an increase of 4.1 % over 2011 . London 's Heathrow Airport came in third place with 70 million passengers , an increase of 0.9 % , according to Airports Council International , the worldwide association of airports . Rounding out the top 10 busiest passenger airports were Tokyo International Airport ( Haneda ) , Chicago O'Hare International Airport , Los Angeles International Airport , Paris , Dallas/Fort Worth , Jakarta and Dubai . # ATL24 : Behind the scenes at the world 's busiest airport . Passenger traffic continued to grow around the world , with the world 's airports serving more than 5.7 billion passengers last year , growing by 4.4 percent from the previous year , according to the report . Atlanta 's airport also topped the rankings in airplane movements ( takeoffs and landings ) , with 930,000 movements last year . Chicago O'Hare International Airport came in second place with 878,000 movements and Los Angeles International Airport ranked third with 699,000 movements . Rounding out that list were Dallas/Fort Worth , Denver , Beijing , Charlotte , Las Vegas , Houston and Paris . Hong Kong 's airport is still the busiest cargo airport in the world , transporting 4.1 million metric tons of cargo last year . Memphis , Tennessee , home to FedEx , came in second place with 4.0 million metric tons and Shanghai was third with 2.9 million metric tons . ( One metric ton equals 2,205 pounds . ) Rounding out the top 10 were cargo airports in : Anchorage , Alaska ; Incheon , South Korea ; Dubai ; Louisville , Kentucky ; Paris ; Frankfurt , Germany ; and Tokyo ( Narita ) . This report updates a preliminary report released in March .
The passenger traffic continued to grow last year . The top passenger airport is n't the top cargo airport . Paris was the only airport to make it onto all the top cargo airport lists .