The Cities with the Most Airports in the World

How many airports does your city have? Not as many as the top city on the list. Unless that, by coincicdence, is where you live. And even if you do, I bet you won’t guess how many airports it has.

It does naturally depend on whether we are to believe sleazy marketing managers or not. Oslo, my hometown, will in that case have three airports, although the most remote one, Torp Sandefjord Airport (TRF), is 119 kilometers and almost 2 hours by bus from downtown Oslo. But it is in the former whaling capital in Norway where you might actually end up if you book a ticket to “Oslo” without checking your tickets carefully. And Moss Rygge (RYG) has not been operational for a few years. But hey, let us for once buy into these marketing tricks and declare the world’s most plane friendly city.

Oslo is one of 14 cities that have three airports with commercial flights, according to Wikipedia. Half of them are in the US.

But three is nothing in this competition. Four cities – Stockholm, Boston, Melbourne and Paris – have four each. Then again, the fourth one in Paris is a whopping 166 kilometers by car away from the Eiffel Tower and is much better located for bubble lovers who fancy a trip to Champagne – where Châlons Vatry Airport (XCR) is actually located. This also makes it the most remote airport in question.

Not that it really matters, Los Angeles has five airports, none of which are more than 70 kilometers from the city.

Which makes londoners laugh. They have six airports to chose from! You all know about Heathrow (LHR) and Gatwick (LGW), and probably City (LCY), Stansted (STN) and Luton (LTN) too. Southend Airport (SEN) may be more unknown to most. Only two airlines have regular scheduled flights to and from the strip of tarmac in Rochford in Essex.

But what do you know, London is also beaten. By a city it is very well connected to.

New York City.

Too right. New Yorkers can easily avoid John F. Kennedy (JFK), Newark (EWR) and LaGuardia (LGA). The selection of flights will be much more limited, but nevertheless. How about Long Island MacArthur Airport (ISP), Stewart International Airport (SWF), Trenton-Mercer Airport (TTN) and Westchester County Airport (HPN)? That makes an impressive seven airports in total. And they all offer scheduled flights.

I don’t even want to start counting private airfields and minor airports.

And did you know that you can spell out entire sentences using only airport codes?

The best airport in the world.