Countries With the Most Airports, Region by Region

The United States has the most airports of any country, with 16,116, followed by Brazil with 5,297 and Australia with 2,257, according to the final 2025 edition of the CIA World Factbook. Mexico (1,580), Canada (1,459), France (1,218), the United Kingdom (1,057), Russia (905), Germany (840) and Argentina (764) complete the top ten. The United States alone has about a third of the 47,242 airports the Factbook counted worldwide, because the figure includes every airfield, from Atlanta’s Hartsfield–Jackson to private grass strips on farms.

How the CIA World Factbook Counted 47,242 Airports

For decades the standard source for this ranking was the CIA World Factbook, which listed the number of airports for every country and territory. On 4 February 2026 the CIA announced, without explanation, that the Factbook had been discontinued, so its 2025 figures are the last official edition; they remain available in print and through archives. The Factbook counted airports and airfields recognisable from the air, whether the runway was paved or unpaved, so a gravel strip on a cattle station counts the same as a four-runway hub. That is why countries with vast rural areas and many light aircraft rank so high, and why the list says little about passenger traffic.

Heliports were counted in a separate field: 21,741 worldwide in 2025. The United States had 8,130 of them, Japan 3,036 and Brazil 1,871, so Japan, only 24th in the world for airports with 280, is second for heliports. The European Union’s 27 members, taken together, had 5,211 airports, just behind Brazil and about a third of the US total. At the other extreme, a handful of small states have no airport at all, covered in our list of countries with no airports. The top ten between them account for 31,493 airports, two-thirds of the world total. Reading the list continent by continent shows what drives the numbers: land area, the gap between towns and roads, and how many private pilots a country has.

North America: The United States’ 16,116 Airfields, Then Mexico and Canada

The United States has more than three times as many airports as any other country. Most are small fields, many of them privately owned, with a single short runway and no scheduled flights, but the count also includes the busiest passenger airport on Earth. Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International Airport has been the world’s busiest by passenger traffic every year since 1998 except 2020, and handled 106.3 million passengers in 2025. Named after two former Atlanta mayors, William B. Hartsfield and Maynard Jackson, it lies about 16 km (10 mi) south of downtown Atlanta. As the main hub of Delta Air Lines, it has just over 1,000 flights a day to 225 destinations.

Some American places depend on aircraft entirely. Juneau, the capital of Alaska, has no road connecting it to the rest of the state or to the lower 48 states because of the steep terrain around it; people, cars and freight arrive by plane, barge or the Alaska Marine Highway ferries.

Mexico ranks fourth with 1,580 airports. Greater Mexico City now has three commercial airports, after Felipe Ángeles International Airport, a former air force base at Zumpango 35 km north of the city, opened to civilian flights in 2022. Canada, the world’s second-largest country, has 1,459 airports. Nunavut has few or no road or rail links to the rest of Canada, so even the diesel fuel that runs its generators and heats its homes arrives by plane or boat. Further south, Central America and the Caribbean are led by Costa Rica (132), Honduras (129) and Cuba (120).

South America: Brazil’s 5,297 and Argentina’s 764

Brazil has the second-largest number of airports in the world, and with 1,871 heliports it ranks third for those too, behind the United States and Japan. Its 37 international airports include São Paulo–Guarulhos, the country’s busiest, and Rio de Janeiro–Galeão, which between them take most international flights. The thousands of other fields are spread across a country of 8.5 million km², much of it Amazon rainforest and Cerrado savanna. As of 2020, Brazil had the eighth-largest passenger air market in the world.

Argentina is tenth worldwide with 764 airports, and the rest of the continent has more airfields than its population might suggest. Colombia has 661, Venezuela 509, Chile 379, Ecuador 317, Bolivia 201 and Peru 174. Chile, which stretches more than 4,300 km from north to south but averages only 175 km wide, needs airfields strung along its length from the Atacama Desert to Patagonia.

Europe: France and the United Kingdom Lead a Field of Small Airfields

Europe’s leader is France with 1,218 airports, followed by the United Kingdom (1,057), Russia (905, spread across both its European and Asian territory), Germany (840) and Italy (655). Spain has 365, Poland 318 and Czechia 252. Only a small share of these are large passenger airports; most are minor airfields. London Heathrow, Europe’s busiest airport in 2025 and the fifth busiest in the world, is one of only six international airports in the London system (the others are Gatwick, Stansted, Luton, City and Southend). For the passenger ranking rather than the airfield count, see our guide to the busiest airports in the world.

Oceania: Australia’s Outback Strips and Papua New Guinea’s Highland Runways

Australia is third in the world with 2,257 airports, far ahead of its neighbours Papua New Guinea (569) and New Zealand (206), with French Polynesia (54) next. Among the smaller Pacific states, the Solomon Islands have 36 airports, the Marshall Islands 33 and Vanuatu 31, spread across their scattered island chains. Distance explains it. Outback stations and remote communities use dirt strips for mail, supplies and medical flights. The Royal Flying Doctor Service, founded in 1928 as the world’s first comprehensive civilian air medical service, made its first official flight on 17 May 1928, from Cloncurry to Julia Creek in Queensland, where more than 100 people met the plane at the airstrip.

Papua New Guinea, which the Factbook files under East and Southeast Asia, has 569 airports, more than Indonesia or China, for a population much smaller than any other country with that many. Its capital, Port Moresby, has no road link to any other major town, and many highland villages can be reached only by light aircraft or on foot. Mountainous terrain and heavy rain limit the road network, most of which is unpaved.

Asia and the Middle East: Indonesia Edges Past China

Among Asian countries, the leader is not China but Indonesia, with 556 airports against China’s 552. Indonesia’s total reflects its geography: it is the world’s largest archipelagic state, made up of between 13,000 and 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi and parts of Borneo and New Guinea. Behind them come India (315), Japan (280) and the Philippines (256), while Kazakhstan leads the Central Asian republics with 132.

China’s total is modest for a country of its size and population. Its 552 airports are fewer than Colombia’s 661, a reminder that the Factbook count tracks the number of airfields, not the size of a country’s airline traffic. India is similar: 315 airports and 289 heliports for more than 1.4 billion people. In the Middle East, Iran has the most with 177, ahead of Turkey (116), Saudi Arabia (90) and Iraq (73).

Nepal has only 51 airports, but they show why small airfields matter in mountain countries. Tenzing–Hillary Airport at Lukla, built in 1964 under the supervision of Edmund Hillary, sits at 2,845 m (9,334 ft) and has a runway just 527 m long with an 11.7% gradient. There is no road to the region north of Lukla, so the airport carries most of the building materials and cargo for the villages on the route to Everest Base Camp. Its reputation is covered in our list of the most dangerous airports in the world.

Africa: South Africa, Kenya and the Congo Basin

South Africa leads Africa with 573 airports, ahead of Kenya with 368. The Democratic Republic of the Congo has 273; there, air and river transport play an important role because of the terrain and the poor state of the road and rail networks. Namibia (259) and Tanzania (206) follow, then Zimbabwe (144), Botswana (122) and Zambia (120). Southern and eastern Africa dominate the continent’s count: all eight of its leaders lie in the southern half of the continent or straddle the equator, while North Africa’s large but mostly desert countries have far fewer airfields.

Across every region, the pattern holds: the countries with the most airports are large, thinly settled in places, and wealthy enough to support private flying, or else so rugged that aircraft are the only practical link between towns. The United States combines all of these, which is why it has more airfields than the next nine countries together.