Airport hub · Santiago
Santiago’s Arturo Merino Benítez closed 2025 with 26,517,871 passengers — an all-time record, +7.7% over pre-pandemic 2019 — even as aircraft shortages clipped the second half. International traffic drove it: 12.5 million passengers, +4.5%, on the continent’s only direct air bridge to Oceania.
SCL is the only airport in South America with direct trans-Pacific service — Sydney, Melbourne and Auckland on Qantas and LATAM, plus Easter Island — making Santiago the continent’s hinge to Oceania and a genuine long-haul hub for Air France, British Airways, KLM and Iberia. The 2025 route ledger shows the machine’s shape: Buenos Aires (1.72M passengers), Lima (1.70M) and São Paulo (1.52M) lead, Madrid (658,000) is the European anchor, and Brazil alone moved 3.39 million passengers between the two countries on nine direct Santiago links.
Domestically, the airport is Chile’s spine: Calama (2.28M — mining plus Atacama tourism), Antofagasta (2.12M) and Puerto Montt (1.64M) top the board, and roughly 60% of all passengers are Chileans connecting through their own capital. LATAM carries about 54% of traffic and 82% of commercial flights; JetSmart (23%) and Sky (12%) built the low-cost layer that now holds 36% of the market — the structure behind eight years of domestic growth.
The new Terminal 2 — 248,400 m², 45 new gates, 80+ shops and restaurants — more than doubled capacity to 38 million passengers a year, and Terminal 1’s rebuild (new arrivals hall, the 17,000 m² T1-A wing with eight more gates) equips the domestic side for 20 million. The concessionaire’s horizon is longer: a $4 billion program aims at 84 million passengers and 125 operations per hour by 2050, with a third runway and terminal in the plan.
The historic gap was ground access — South America’s most modern terminal fed by taxis and buses. That ends with Line A: announced by President Boric in June 2025, a 6–7 km light rail will link the airport to Huelén station on Metro Line 7, plugging SCL into the metro network when both open around 2028. Until then, Centropuerto and kupos.cl run the bridge: direct regional-bus connections let passengers from Valparaíso, O’Higgins and Maule reach the terminal without crossing the city.
The TIO Read: SCL is the most strategically positioned airport in South America — the Pacific bridge is a monopoly no rival can copy, and the 2025 record was set with one hand tied by fleet shortages. The reviewer’s call: the 47.2% international share is the number to track — when it crosses 50%, Santiago stops being a domestic airport with international wings and becomes a true transfer hub; until the Line 7/Line A link opens (2028), budget the taxi line and book the morning departure bank to dodge the Andes afternoon winds.
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