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Seoul Incheon tops interim international passenger traffic
August 14th 2026
Incheon International Airport Corp. (IIAC), which administers Seoul Incheon Airport, announced that it handled the highest number of international passengers in the first half of this year globally, according to Airports Council International (ACI) international passenger traffic data. Read More » The airport handled 38.39 million international passengers in the January-June period, compared to 37.79 million international passengers using London Heathrow, and Singapore Changi Airport’s 34.53 million. This marks the first time Incheon has topped the ranking since opening in 2001. The performance was helped by shifts in global air traffic following heightened geopolitical tensions in the Middle East. Disruptions at major Middle Eastern transit hubs redirected some passenger flows toward Incheon, boosting both direct and transfer traffic, the airport said. Incheon handled 4.24 million transfer passengers in the first half, up 18.1% from a year earlier. Transfer passengers on European routes jumped 63.2% to about 214,000, while total passengers on those routes rose 11.2% to 2.5 million. Foreign nationals represented 44.4% of all passengers in the second quarter, the highest quarterly proportion on record, driven largely by an increase in arrivals from China and Japan.
