Airport: Atlanta

If you travel, there's a good chance you're going to Atlanta. The city's Hartsfield-Jackson airport is the busiest in the world, with 88 million passengers last year, a third more than the distant second, London's Heathrow. The hometown hub for Delta Air Lines (DAL), Atlanta's 2.5 million-square-foot terminal complex was designed in the 1970s to accommodate 55 million passengers a year. The airport has attracted as many "customers" as it has by competing on price, charging less to rent terminal space and gate access than competing hubs. According to the airport's own numbers, airlines flying to Atlanta pay about $5 per passenger, less than half the $11 charged by Chicago's O'Hare and about a third the $15 charged by San Francisco. At the high end, New Jersey's Newark Liberty airport charges about $19 per passenger.

Competing on price usually means skimping on service, so whether you will enjoy your visit to Atlanta is another matter. Atlanta ranked 47th out of 195 airports globally in a 2010 passenger survey by London-based Skytrax. CNN news piped through Atlanta's overhead speakers is "loud and inescapable," and there is "even less opportunity for peace and quiet" than at most airports, one passenger wrote on Skytrax's customer review website. No. 1 in survey popularity, as opposed to traffic, was Singapore's Changi Airport. Travelers to Singapore can get a haircut, rent a bed for a couple hours, take a swim, or stroll through butterfly or orchid gardens. "Customers tend to favor airports that are comfortable, clean, well-staffed, quiet, and pleasant to wait at between flights, and that makes Singapore a perennial favorite," says Edward Plaisted, chief executive of Skytrax. "Atlanta is very much a function airport, not a comfort airport." —Mary Jane Credeur

RUNNERS-UP
2. Chicago O'Hare
3. Los Angeles International
4. Dallas/Fort Worth
5. Denver