The register in numbers
Figures cover land airfields in this register — heliports and seaplane bases are left out. Showing Europe: 7,390 open airfields.
Millions of passengers in each airport’s latest reported year.
Runways are laid into the prevailing wind, so their headings map the weather. Each runway counts at both ends, which makes the rose symmetric. Europe, the strongest axis runs west–east.
10° sectors by true heading, where the source gives one. Bar length ∝ runways; the busiest axis is highlighted.
Passenger index, 2019 = 100, over the 339 airports in Europe that reported every year 2017–2025; each panel counts its own region’s. The same scale throughout, so the panels compare.
Distinct destinations with scheduled service.
Great-circle distance between airports on each other’s destination lists. The lists also name one-stop flights sold under one number — Turkish Airlines’ Sydney–Istanbul stops in Kuala Lumpur — and don’t tell them apart; routes longer than the longest non-stop flown are left out.
Million tonnes of freight and mail, latest year 2023–2025; 324 airports in Europe report it. Figures come from Eurostat and the US Bureau of Transportation Statistics, so Asian hubs such as Hong Kong are not among them.
Passengers divided by commercial flights. Leisure and long-haul airports fill big aircraft; island and regional strips fill a few seats.
330 airports in Europe report both figures to Eurostat or the BTS. Horizontal axis: annual passengers, log scale.
84% of airfields in Europe sit below 500 m (1,640 ft). Bins are equal width on a square-root scale, so low fields get room; below-sea-level fields fall in the first bar. Metres.Feet.
Opening year for 1,787 airfields; closure year for 468 of 1,730 closed. Dates come from Wikidata and Wikipedia; FAA dates record when a field entered the FAA database, so they are left out.
Records count open land airfields with an ICAO or IATA code — a seaplane base’s 9 km (5.6 mi) “runway” is a water lane, and uncoded strips include model-aircraft clubs. The shortest runway is among airfields with airline service and a paved strip.