There are now two airports in the Miami metro area ranked among the top 20 in the U.S by passenger count.
New York is the only other metropolitan area with two airports in the top 20.
The milestone was reached thanks to another strong year of growth at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport. In 2017, passenger count at FLL was 32.5M, up 11.3% from 2016. For the year, the airport ranked as the 19th busiest nationwide, ahead of LaGuardia and Philadelphia.
MIA, which broke a record in 2016, had 44M passengers for the year, down 1.15% from the previous year.
Both airports achieved their top 20 ranking despite Hurricane Irma, which caused a sharp drop in passenger count during September.
Strong growth is expected again this year at FLL, with projected seat count up 8.5% for the first six months of the year.
