{
  "source_url": "https://aci.aero/resources/busiest-airports-in-the-world/",
  "source_basis": "Original public HTML saved and hashed. International table parsed deterministically; not the overall-passenger or cargo tables.",
  "source_page_modified": "2026-10-15T14:54:35-04:00",
  "retrieved": "2026-10-22",
  "observation_year": 2025,
  "universe": "ACI’s 20 busiest airports by 2025 international passenger traffic; this is a current-top-20 cohort, not all world airports or the 2019 top 20.",
  "display_cohort": "Exactly nine airports with published change_vs_2019_pct < 0. All 20 source rows remain in all-20-airports.csv.",
  "unit": "International passengers enplaned and deplaned, not unique travellers; percentage changes in annual airport traffic counts.",
  "comparisons": {
    "2025_vs_2024": "One-year percentage change",
    "2025_vs_2019": "Six-year cumulative percentage change, not annualised"
  },
  "claims": {
    "below_2019_of_top20": 9,
    "of_those_growing_vs2024": 8,
    "Hong_Kong": "2025 +14.9% versus 2024, −14.7% versus 2019"
  },
  "istanbul": "ACI reports +68.3% vs 2019 for IST, but its 2019 baseline is affected by the Atatürk-to-Istanbul Airport transition on 6 April 2019. It is outside the negative-baseline cohort. No like-for-like long-term growth claim is made. Published rate retained in all-20 CSV.",
  "istanbul_primary_context": [
    "https://aci.aero/2026/09/02/global-aviation-leaders-convene-in-istanbul-to-define-the-new-era-of-airport-experience/",
    "https://www.igairport.aero/media/oltp5n1s/iga_srde_2019_uyg11.pdf"
  ],
  "rounding": "Published percentages retained to one decimal. Do not reconstruct exact 2019/2024 counts from rounded percentages.",
  "layout": "Common −20% to +20% scale for both published rates in selected nine. Connector compares baselines, not a time-series trajectory.",
  "limits": "No causal attribution to COVID or any other universal explanation; airport comparisons can reflect different local circumstances.",
  "id": "international-airports-2025-recovery",
  "title": "Nine major international airports still below 2019 in 2025",
  "sourceSnapshotDateUTC": "2026-10-22"
}