SEOUL, Aug. 13 (Yonhap) -- Incheon International Airport, the main gateway to Seoul, ranked first worldwide in international passenger traffic in the first half of this year, handling more than 38 million passengers, the airport operator said Thursday.

This marks the first time the country's main gateway has topped the global ranking since it opened in 2001.

The airport handled 38.39 million international passengers in the January-June period, up 6.3 percent from a year earlier, according to Incheon International Airport Corp. (IIAC).

It was the highest figure among 1,234 airports worldwide, based on preliminary statistics from the Airports Council International, putting Incheon ahead of London Heathrow Airport with 37.79 million passengers and Singapore's Changi Airport with 34.53 million.

Incheon's global ranking in international passenger numbers had risen from 10th place in 2002 (20.55 million) to fifth place in 2018 (67.68 million) and again to third place in 2024 (70.67 million).

IIAC officials speculate that existing air travel demand, such as traffic between Dubai and Europe, may have shifted to Incheon as transit operations at Middle Eastern airports like Dubai have weakened following the U.S.-Iran war.

In fact, the number of transfer passengers at Incheon in the first half of this year jumped 18.1 percent from a year earlier to 4.24 million. In particular, the number of transfer passengers on European routes surged 63.2 percent on-year to 210,000.

Notably, the proportion of foreign passengers among all passengers at Incheon reached an all-time high of 44.4 percent in the second quarter of this year.

ycm@yna.co.kr

(END)

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