The map above shows the number of airports that serve at least 15,000 passengers per year for every 10,000 square kilometers in each EU state. Malta has the most busy airports per square kilometer.
Findings
- The difference between the state with the greatest number of airports per square kilometer, Malta, and the state with the least, Latvia, is 31.49 airports per 10,000 square kilometers.
- Malta has 204.43 times the number of busy airports per 10,000 square kilometers that Latvia does.
- The median number of busy airports per 10,000 square kilometers in the 28 EU states is 0.91 and the mean is 2.20.
Caveats
- Airport data is from 2016.
- Area data is from 2007.
- All figures are rounded to the nearest hundredth.
- Fifteen thousand annual passengers amounts to 41 per day, so busy is loosely defined.
- The map is presented in an Albers equal-area conic projection.
- The choropleth classification is based on Jenks or natural breaks.
Details
Malta, understandably so, has the most airports per area because it is so tiny even though it only has one busy commercial airport. It even has almost ten times as many as the next ranked state, Luxembourg. On the other extreme, it is also a small state, Latvia, with the least number of busy airports per area and it has half as many in this metric as the next to last state, Bulgaria. It is all former Soviet satellites that have less busy airports per area than large states like Finland and Sweden.
Greece, the United Kingdom, Italy, Germany, and France are the only states with greater than 100,000 square kilometers that have more than one airport per 10,000 square kilometers. Greece is the only one to have more than two which is understandable as it has all those islands it needs to tend to.
Data
| State | Airports (>15,000 Passengers) | Area (Square Kilometers) |
|---|---|---|
| Austria | 6 | 83,858 |
| Belgium | 5 | 30,528 |
| Bulgaria | 4 | 110,912 |
| Croatia | 9 | 56,538 |
| Cyprus | 2 | 9,251 |
| Czech Republic | 5 | 78,866 |
| Denmark | 8 | 43,094 |
| Estonia | 2 | 45,100 |
| Finland | 17 | 338,145 |
| France | 62 | 551,500 |
| Germany | 41 | 357,022 |
| Greece | 34 | 131,957 |
| Hungary | 4 | 93,032 |
| Ireland | 7 | 70,273 |
| Italy | 35 | 301,318 |
| Latvia | 1 | 64,600 |
| Lithuania | 3 | 65,300 |
| Luxembourg | 1 | 2,586 |
| Malta | 1 | 316 |
| Netherlands | 5 | 41,528 |
| Poland | 12 | 312,685 |
| Portugal | 13 | 91,982 |
| Romania | 12 | 238,391 |
| Slovakia | 4 | 49,033 |
| Slovenia | 1 | 20,256 |
| Spain | 38 | 505,992 |
| Sweden | 30 | 449,964 |
| United Kingdom | 43 | 242,900 |
Sources
Eurostat. 2018. "Number of Commercial Airports (with More Than 15,000 Passenger Units per Year)." Accessed November 25, 2018. http://appsso.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/nui/show.do?query=BOOKMARK_DS-054100_QID_5E0B9564_UID_-3F171EB0&layout=TIME,C,X,0;GEO,L,Y,0;TRA_INFR,L,Z,0;INDICATORS,C,Z,1;&zSelection=DS-054100TRA_INFR,AIRP;DS-054100INDICATORS,OBS_FLAG;&rankName1=TIME_1_0_0_0&rankName2=TRA-INFR_1_2_-1_2&rankName3=GEO_1_2_0_1&rankName4=INDICATORS_1_2_-1_2&sortC=ASC_-1_FIRST&rStp=&cStp=&rDCh=&cDCh=&rDM=true&cDM=true&footnes=false&empty=false&wai=false&time_mode=NONE&time_most_recent=false&lang=EN&cfo=%23%23%23%2C%23%23%23.%23%23%23.
United Nations. 2007. "United Nations Statistics Division - Environment Statistics." Accessed January 23, 2018. https://unstats.un.org/unsd/environment/totalarea.htm.