According to the last data released by the European statistical Agency Eurostat London-Heathrow was the European airport which handled the highest number of passengers over the year 2010, despite a decrease of 0.2% compared with 2009. In total, more than 65 million passengers transited through the British airport.

General figures show that in 2010 nearly 777 million passengers travelled by air in the European Union, with aboit 323 million passengers travelling on intra-EU flights, 291 million on extra-EU flights and 163 million on national flights. From the total passengers who flew through European airports, about 55% did so through one of the top ten airports.

The figures put forward by the European statistical Agency Eurostat show the important effect that the Icelandic volcanic eruption had in air transport over second quarter of 2010, which showed a decreae of 1.3% compared with the second quarter of 2009. However, growth returned in the third quarter of 2010 with passenger number up by 5.8%.

According to these figures London-Heathrow remained on top, followed by Paris-Charles de Gaulle which handled 58 million passengers and Frankfurt-Main with 53 million. Madrid-Barajas came in fourth place with 50 million passengers and Amsterdam-Schiphol in fifth with 45 million. Among these, London-Heathrow handled the most extra-EU passengers with 39 million, Amsterdam-Schiphol the most intra-EU passengers with 25 million and Madrid-Barajas the most national passengers with 19 million.

Aggregated figures show that nine of the top 30 airports registered decreases in the number of passengers handled in 2010. Dublin suffered the strongest fall with 10.1% less passengers, followed by London-Stansted with 7.0% less, and Manchester and Athinai with 5.2% less passengers in both cases. The largest increases were observed in København-Kastrup with 9.1% more, Wien-Schwechat with and increase of 8.7%, Milano-Malpensa with 7.9% and Roma-Fiumicino with 7.6% more passengers.