Passenger numbers are probably considered the most important in the measure of any airport, probably followed by the number of aircraft movements.

The official source of aircraft movement numbers, or operations in the U.S. is the Air Traffic Activity System (ATADS), at http://aspm.faa.gov/opsnet/sys/Airport.asp.

The top five airports in term operations in order are ATL, ORD, DFW, DEN and LAX. These are the top five in the world here as well. These airports have been the top five for about the last five years or so, and a couple of years ago DEN finally surpassed LAX and moved from fifth to fourth.

This data goes back to 1989. In 1996, the first year of measure for the new DEN, it was ranked a paltry eighteenth. It has climbed steadily since and is now ranked fourth.

DWF, on the other hand, has been in the top five continuously, and in 1997 and 1998, it even ranked FIRST.

Again, DEN has been climbing continuously. Last year it finished roughly 17,000 aircraft movements behind third place DFW.

So far this year, DEN is only about 2500 movements behind DFW through June, and DEN has shown slightly more movements in both months of May and June of this year.

DEN supposedly has F9 on the brink with its some 300 movements a day, and supposedly ZK, with its 140 movements a day, is on a countdown watch. And will the new UA/CO be dehubbing DEN, or will WN finally get tired of losing money here and cut here to right size?

On the other hand, AA has announced that it will be cutting about 270 departures system wide in the fall. How many of these will be at DFW? And how will the spin-off of Eagle affect operations here?

The initial planners at DEN wanted it to be bigger and busier than DFW. They got the bigger part in land area. And DEN has had the momentum the last couple of months in terms of operations. Can this last? Will it be enough to surpass DFW this year by at least this measure of aircraft movements?