Top 10 Busiest EU Airports by Flights

Key Takeaways

• Amsterdam Schiphol ranked first among the EU’s busiest airports by flights in 2024. It logged 473,803 aircraft movements.
• The Netherlands has a small domestic population. Schiphol relies on a dense network of short connecting flights to feed its long-haul routes instead.
• Paris-Charles de Gaulle carried the most passengers of any EU airport in 2024. Amsterdam Schiphol still recorded the most flights of any EU airport in 2024.
• Frankfurt and Munich are Germany’s two busiest airports by passenger traffic. Neither appears in this flights ranking because Germany and Austria do not report airport-level flight counts to Eurostat.
• Spain has the most airports among the EU’s busiest airports by flights. Three of its airports make the list: Madrid-Barajas, Barcelona-El Prat, and Palma de Mallorca.
• Airports serving popular tourist destinations had the strongest passenger growth in the EU in 2024. That growth came from vacation travel, family visits, and low-cost airlines adding routes.

Busiest EU Airports by Flights

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Amsterdam Schiphol Handles the Most Flights Among EU Countries

Amsterdam Schiphol Is the Busiest EU Airport by Flights

A commercial aircraft movement is one takeoff or one landing that carries passengers, freight, or mail. This article counts each movement as one flight for the airport where it happens.

Frankfurt and Munich are Germany’s two busiest airports by passenger traffic. However, Germany did not report airport-level flight counts.

Amsterdam Schiphol had the most number of flights among the 25 EU countries with flight data in 2024. It logged 473,803 aircraft movements.

The Netherlands has a small domestic population. Relatively few passengers start or end their trip in Amsterdam alone.

Amsterdam Schiphol instead runs a dense network of short flights to other European cities. Those flights feed passengers onto its long-haul routes.

Paris-Charles de Gaulle ranked second for flights in 2024. It logged 459,783 aircraft movements.

Passenger totals reverse the busiest airports by flights ranking.

Paris-Charles de Gaulle carried 70.3 million passengers in 2024. It carried more than Amsterdam Schiphol’s 66.8 million passengers.

Flights and passenger counts measure different things. A single trip between two cities creates two aircraft movements, one at each end. That is why the busiest airport rankings reverse.

A flight count and a passenger count can therefore rank the same airports in a different order. The size of that passenger gap comes down to how many passengers each flight carries on average.

The average flight at Paris-Charles de Gaulle carried about 153 passengers in 2024. The average flight at Amsterdam Schiphol carried about 141.

A higher number of passengers per flight usually points to larger aircraft or more long-haul routes. That pattern explains why Paris carries more passengers despite ranking behind Schiphol on flights.

Tourism Puts Three Spanish Airports Among the EU’s Busiest by Flights

Spain has the most airports among the EU’s busiest airports by flights. Three of its airports make the list:

• Madrid-Barajas (408,822 movements)
• Barcelona-El Prat (339,542 movements)
• Palma de Mallorca (233,108 movements)

Madrid-Barajas, Barcelona-El Prat, and Palma de Mallorca serve some of the EU’s most popular tourist destinations.

• Madrid is Spain’s capital and a major city destination.
• Barcelona and Mallorca are two of Europe’s most visited beach and coastal destinations.

Tourist-destination airports posted the strongest passenger growth in the EU in 2024. That growth in flights came from vacation travel, trips to visit family, and low-cost airlines adding routes.

Alicante and Malaga show this same tourist-driven growth. Both posted some of the largest passenger increases in the EU in 2024.

• Alicante’s passenger traffic grew 16.8% in 2024.
• Malaga’s grew 11.6% in 2024.

Palma de Mallorca ranked 9th among the EU’s busiest airports by flights in 2024. That ranking put it above several EU capital-city airports, including Lisbon, Warsaw, Prague, Budapest, and Bucharest.

Outranking capital-city airports is not unique to Spain. In terms of flights, Dublin Airport was also ahead of the same capital-city airports as Palma de Mallorca.

Amsterdam Schiphol needs a dense web of connecting flights to feed its long-haul network. Spain’s airports instead fill up with vacationers flying directly to their destination.

Schiphol’s connecting traffic and Spain’s tourist traffic both produce a high number of flights for very different reasons.