London's Heathrow airport, with almost 78 million passengers, was the airport in the European Union that moved the largest volume of travelers last year, ahead of Paris's Charles de Gaulle (69.4 million) and Amsterdam's Schiphol (68.4 million), according to data recently provided by the European statistical office, Eurostat.
Five Spanish airports are among the 30 in the European Union with the largest volume of passengers. The one that transported the most passengers last year was Madrid's Barajas airport, with 52 million, which placed it in fifth position in the European ranking behind Germany's Frankfurt airport.
Right behind Barajas appears El Prat, Barcelona's airport, sixth in the European ranking with 46.8 million passengers transported last year. Palma de Mallorca airport occupied the 13th position with 27.9 million passengers, Málaga's Costa del Sol was 25th with 18.5 million passengers, while Alicante airport was located in the 30th position in the EU with 13.6 million passengers.
The EU airport with the highest number of passengers on domestic flights was Barajas, with 14.7 million, ahead of Orly (Paris) and El Prat (Barcelona). In international flights within the EU, the leader of the ranking was Amsterdam airport (41 million) followed by Gatwick (London) and Charles de Gaulle (Paris). In contrast, for flights outside the EU, the one that transported the most passengers in 2017 was Heathrow (London), with 46.2 million, ahead of Charles de Gaulle (Paris) and Frankfurt airport.
The following graphs show the complete ranking of the 30 busiest EU airports by number of passengers transported in 2017, with the total number of passengers and the variation compared to the previous year. They also allow discovering the ranking according to the number of passengers on domestic flights and on international flights within and outside the EU.