Airports Don’t Just Make Money From Airplanes

An airport looks like a transport business until you follow the money. The runway brings the traffic, but parking, shops, restaurants, property and freight increasingly determine what that traffic is worth.

01 — The CrowdThere Is More Than One Way to Be “Busiest”

Airports Council International (ACI) counted 9.8 billion passengers in 2025, up 3.7% from 2024 and 6.5% above 2019. Atlanta remained the world’s busiest passenger airport with 106.3 million travellers, followed by Dubai at 95.2 million and Tokyo Haneda at 91.7 million.¹

But passenger volume is only one lens. Chicago O’Hare led aircraft movements with 857,392 take-offs and landings. Hong Kong led cargo with just over 5.07 million tonnes, ahead of Shanghai Pudong and Anchorage.¹ The lesson is simple: “busiest” depends on what an airport is built to do.

02 — The Commercial LayerThe Runway Is Only Part of the Business

Airport revenue is usually split into two buckets. Aeronautical revenue comes from activities tied directly to flying: landing charges, terminal rents, passenger fees and related services. Non-aeronautical revenue comes from parking, ground transport, rental cars, retail, food and beverage, property, advertising and other commercial activity.

For U.S. airports, ACI-NA’s 2025 benchmarking presentation shows that FY2023 revenue was roughly 54% aeronautical and 46% non-aeronautical. Within the non-aeronautical side, parking and ground transportation alone represented 46%, followed by rental cars at 18%. Retail and duty-free were 6%, and food and beverage 7%.² Globally, ACI estimates that non-aeronautical revenue reached about US$73 billion in 2024.³

That commercial layer is not just about putting more shops in a terminal. A peer-reviewed study of 89 U.S. airports found that a 10% increase in passenger dwell time was associated with roughly a 5% increase in total non-aeronautical revenue, including 8% for food and beverage and 6% for retail. The effect also varied by terminal design.⁴ In other words, time and layout can become economic assets.

Paris offers a useful real-world example. Groupe ADP reported average Extime Paris sales of €32.10 per departing passenger in 2024 across a defined basket of airside commercial activities.⁵ That figure is more useful than a vague “duty-free market size” because the company defines what is actually being measured.

03 — The Cargo StorySmall by Weight, Huge by Value

Air cargo carries less than 1% of world trade by weight but roughly one-third by value — a clue to the sort of goods that tend to fly: expensive, time-sensitive and difficult to leave sitting in transit.⁶

IATA’s analysis of 2025 trade flows makes the point vividly. During the first-quarter tariff frontloading in the United States, imports were US$193 billion higher than a year earlier. IATA reports that the increase in imports carried by air totalled US$157 billion — about 82% of the overall increase; the value of imports by air itself rose 81% year on year.⁷ In the same analysis, AI-related goods represented 53.5% of the value of air-transported trade but only 7% of its volume.

The sample matters. IATA’s modal analysis is based on 42 countries that consistently report trade by transport mode, representing 37% of global trade in 2025.⁷ That makes the result striking, but it should not be presented as a complete census of every shipment worldwide.

04 — The Regional EconomyConnectivity Matters, but Multipliers Need Context

The FAA estimates that U.S. civil aviation supported US$1.8 trillion in economic activity, 9.4 million jobs and 4.0% of U.S. GDP using 2022 data.⁸ These are economic-impact estimates, not a promise that every new runway will generate the same return.

European research reaches a similar but more nuanced conclusion. SEO Amsterdam Economics, in work for ACI Europe, estimates that a 10% increase in direct air connectivity is associated in its model with roughly a 0.5% increase in GDP and a 1.6% increase in employment.⁹ The word associated matters: connectivity can support growth, while fast-growing regions also tend to demand more connectivity.

Dubai shows the scale of the relationship when aviation becomes part of a wider development strategy. An Oxford Economics study released by Emirates Group and Dubai Airports estimated that the wider Dubai aviation sector — not DXB alone — supported US$37.3 billion in gross value added and 631,000 jobs in 2023.¹⁰