I nominate KSAN as far as commercial airports go. I think they average a little more than 200,000 operations per year there. I know there are probably some other airports in the GA sector with more operations, probably located in So Cal as well. What’s the busiest single-runway airport you can think of?
Anyone could make a guess, but the most current data statistics I could find on passenger boarding numbers is for 2006.
faa.gov/airports_airtraffic/ … p_comm.pdf
San Diego is ranked 29, and it appears that Greenville Spartanburg International is the second highest ranking airport with a single runway at 97, unless I missed on somewhere.
I’ve heard London Gatwick LGW/ EGKK is the busiest single runway airport in the world. Haven’t seen numbers though.
That’s my understanding, too. Here’s confirmation from airport-london.co.uk/
Gatwick Airport is London’s second largest airport and the second busiest airport in the UK after Heathrow, busiest single runway airport and sixth busiest airport in Europe in terms of passengers per year.
Gatwick actually has two runways, but they are so close together they can only use one at a time so it is considered, for practical purposes, to be a single runway airport.
encarta.msn.com/media_701500521/ … dings.html
Its no surprise that VNY still ranks as the busiest GA only airport, it is also busier than BOS, LGA and EWR.
Years ago Santa Monica was the busiest single runway airport in the U.S. based on takeoffs and landings. I don’t know if that is still true or not.
John
Here’s what Wiki has to say:
San Diego International is the busiest single-runway large hub commercial service airport in the United States, with approximately 600 departures and arrivals carrying 40,000 passengers each day, and over 18 million passengers a year. The busiest single-runway airport in the world is London Gatwick Airport.
Confirmed by, again, Wiki:
Gatwick has two runways but the northern runway 08L/26R is a non-instrument runway and is only used when 08R/26L is temporarily non-operational because of maintenance or an accident. The runways cannot be used at the same time because of insufficient separation between them. It can take up to 15 minutes to change over from one runway to the other.
aerial: