El Dorado handled 45.4 million passengers in 2025 — second only to São Paulo in Latin America — while remaining the region's undisputed leader in cargo and aircraft movements, and Colombia's front door for a record tourism wave.
Sitting on the savanna 15 km west of the center, El Dorado is the high-altitude giant of Latin American aviation: Avianca's primary hub, the region's busiest airfield by movements, and in 2024 briefly the busiest airport outright at 45.8 million passengers. Traffic eased 0.7% in 2025 to 45.4 million — still second only to Guarulhos — while the international segment grew 6%, the part of the market Bogotá most wants.
Capacity is the story: the terminals were built for a fraction of today's flow, peak immigration queues have hit three hours, and the answer is a programmed expansion toward 60 million passengers with biometric processing already rolling out. The cargo side needs no expansion of reputation: at 828,600 tonnes, El Dorado moves more freight than any airport in Latin America — much of it the flowers of the savanna, flown out fresh to the world.
From BOG, Avianca and its competitors stitch the continent: nonstops to Miami, New York, Madrid, Mexico City, São Paulo, Lima, Santiago, Panama City and deep into the Colombian interior — Medellín, Cartagena, Cali, Pereira — on frequencies that make the domestic network the real backbone of Colombian travel. Nearly six million international passengers a year connect here.
The visitor's play is the stopover: Avianca lets connecting passengers break a journey in Bogotá for up to 24 hours at no additional fare — a free capital day on the way to Cartagena or Cusco. Practicalities: two terminals (T1 for most, T2/Puente Aéreo for select domestic), arrive three hours before international departures at peak, and sort the ride into the city before you land — the airport sits inside the urban fabric, 45 minutes from the center, with TransMilenio's K86 and official metered taxis as the clean options.
Our read: El Dorado works best when you treat it as infrastructure, not experience — efficient, huge, and occasionally overwhelmed. Book flights that land before the evening immigration peak, consider the free stopover on any Avianca through-ticket, and pre-arrange the transfer: the official taxi rank with its printed slip or a booked car, never an offer in the hall. If you're continuing to the coast same-day, build four hours between flights; Bogotá's afternoon thunderstorms close this airport the way fog closes others.
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