How Incheon Airport has become the world's busiest airport

**Andrew Peach** (0:00)
Airports fight to be number one.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:02)
As our connection back to the States, we're going to Dallas, and we chose Incheon because it has the best connection for us and the best time. So it was really great, and we really like the airport.

**Andrew Peach** (0:13)
It's World Business Report from the BBC World Service.
This is Andrew Peach on the way, what others could learn from the airports in Seoul and Istanbul. Also today, why the closure of the Strait of Hormuz is leading to new overland routes to transport goods, and making electric vehicles, which can cope with the intense heat of countries in the Gulf.
First, Incheon Airport, near the South Korean capital, Seoul, has become the world's busiest international airport for the first time, handling more than 38 million international passengers in the first half of this year. Second came London Heathrow, followed by Singapore's Changi Airport, according to new data from the Airports Council International. Now only a couple of days ago, we were telling you how Heathrow had lost its long held position as Europe's busiest airport in the month of July, with more passengers choosing to fly through Istanbul in Turkey instead. Let's get to the bottom of all of this with Brian Terry, managing director at Alton Aviation Consultancy, which is an independent global aviation advisory consulting firm, and Gemma Antrobus, managing director of the UK travel agency Hazelmere Travel. Thanks both of you for being with us. We'll start with you, Brian. Why are some airports, airports like Istanbul, like Incheon and Seoul, seeing this big growth at the moment?

**Brian Terry** (1:40)
Well, first, thank you for having me today.
I think the growth is from a combination of several things. First and foremost, both Istanbul and Seoul-Incheon laid foundations to support and enable growth by investing, not just in flashing new terminals, but more importantly, the runways and the infrastructure to accommodate growing traffic levels, unlike Heathrow, which, as you know, has been struggling with the third runway controversy for many years.

**Andrew Peach** (2:09)
So, just for people who don't know, I mean, Heathrow is kind of strangled because of where it sits on the outskirts of London and much of the airport is desperate to expand and add a new runway. It's not being allowed to.

**Brian Terry** (2:22)
Exactly. Well, there are not similar constraints at Seoul or Istanbul. And then also, I think the role of the Gulf conflict this year in 2026 helped accelerate some of that shift in traffic.
As traffic was diverted away from the Middle East region for connecting purposes, a lot of that traffic shifted to Istanbul for connecting purposes. And a lot of that traffic simply overflew the connections in the Middle East by departing from airports like Incheon that could support extra capacity in flights.

**Andrew Peach** (2:55)
Right.
I mean, in terms of passengers, my experience as a passenger is you're not really choosing what route will I take, where will I change. You're making that decision based on price from a number of options put in front of you. So it's more the aviation industry that's choosing.

**Brian Terry** (3:16)
I think again, it's an indirect choice. So as you heard from your passengers in the opening there, they said that Seoul provided them the best connections.
So you're right that people may not directly choose their flights based on which airport they're connecting through. But if those airports like Seoul and like Istanbul can accommodate more frequencies, more connections, greater convenience, that's going to come show up in a lot of passengers and influencing their purchasing decisions.

**Andrew Peach** (3:48)
Gemma, does this chime with what you're seeing in your business?

**Gemma Antrobus** (3:51)
Slightly different, actually, to be honest, because in days gone by, certainly it was the price and obviously journey time, what were connections, effective connections between one flight to another. However, what we've seen since the beginning of March is much more consideration of the actual flight routes that clients are taking, particularly when they're traveling long haul. This very much feeds into the sort of the increased traffic in hubs like Istanbul and over in South Korea, because clients are looking at, you know, will there be possible disruption to my journey, which affects my travel? Obviously, for this, we're talking about leisure travel purposes. So we are having many more conversations with clients actually about that flight route and where they're hubbing via and what that means. And at the end of the day, when you make a leisure travel decision, you don't really want anything to change between when you make that decision and when you travel. And obviously, with all the effects of what's going on in the Middle East at the moment, there is still that level of uncertainty that, you know, should I have a flight hubbing via Doha, Dubai, Abu Dhabi? There may be something that changes to that before I fly, which could be costly to me or change my plans entirely. So it's definitely part of a conversation now, more so than it used to be.