In Latin America, we increasingly catch flights, not feelings. 746M passengers flew Latin America & Caribbean routes last year, an +86M boost since 2019.

More of us caught flights through Bogota's El Dorado airport than any other airport in the region—marking a shift from the Brazilian and Mexican dominance of decades past.

No single terminal felt the surge more than Bogotá-El Dorado. The Colombian hub processed 45.4 million travelers, edging past Mexico City (44.9 M) and São Paulo-Guarulhos (43.1 M) to become the region's busiest airport for the first time. Geography helps: Bogotá sits midway between the Americas, so Avianca and LATAM have built spider-web networks that pull in connections to the US and Europe.

Tourism to Colombia has also recovered remarkably, with a 58%increase since pre-pandemic (2019) numbers.

Bogota's airport is now Latin America's busiest

Similar explanations can also account for the top-ten positions of both Lima and Panama City, which have become key points of transfer for inter-American flight paths. Panama and Lima, in part, replaced Mexico City's grand plans to connect the region after President López Obrador infamously canceled a new airport project during his first month in office back in 2018.

Nonetheless, Latin America's two largest countries remain dominant, as Brazil and Mexico have held six of the ten busiest airports in the region for the past decade. São Paulo, the hemisphere's largest city, has both its Guarulhos and Congonhas airports, making it the busiest city for aviation in Latin America.

In terms of traffic growth, Bogota's airport added 18M yearly passengers in the past 10 years. The next closest was Mexico's Cancun airport, which added 13M in the same period.

Meanwhile, the passenger count of Brasilia has experienced the most significant drop among these mega airports over the last decade. The national capital, which is Brazil's third most populous city, saw just 15M passengers in 2024, down by 16% from 2014.

A big thank you to our friend, Jaime Aquino, an air traffic enthusiast who compiled the data for this story.