MCarran International Airport maintained its fifth position on the Federal Aviation Administration's list of busiest flight destinations, the agency said Thursday.

McCarran handled 619,474 flights in 2006, a volume good enough for No. 5 for the second straight year. McCarran ranks just behind fourth-place Los Angeles International Airport, which serviced 656,842 flights in 2006. Flights include takeoffs and landings.

Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport retained its title as the nation's busiest for flights for the second year in a row. The Atlanta airport logged 976,307 flights in 2006. Its rival, Chicago O'Hare International Airport, was second busiest, with 958,643 flights.

Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport ranked third.

Though McCarran didn't improve its ranking, the airport's performance stood out nonetheless: It was among the few major commercial airports in America that added flights in 2006, said Ian Gregor, a California-based spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration.

McCarran's flight traffic in 2006 was up 0.8 percent when compared with 2005.

Just 11 of the nation's 35 busiest commercial airports had flights increase in 2006. The rest had incoming flights fall off, "some precipitously," Gregor said.

Chris Jones, a spokesman for McCarran, said McCarran's higher flight volume was mostly a result of improved visitor volume into Las Vegas.

"The driving factor behind increased traffic at McCarran is the growing interest in tourism and conventions in Las Vegas," Jones said. "The hotels and the (Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority) market this city around the world, and people increasingly want to come here."

Numbers from the convention and visitors authority show that Las Vegas hosted 32.8 million visitors through October, a 1.1 percent increase when compared with the first 10 months of 2005.

Jones said the Federal Aviation Administration's numbers pleased McCarran's officials, but the airport's managers focus more on monitoring passenger counts rather than flight numbers. That's because flight statistics don't gauge how full planes are. Despite a bump of less than 1 percent in the number of flights into McCarran, Jones said, the airport boosted its 2006 passenger counts 4 percent through November, the latest month with available statistics.

But early numbers from the Airports Council International show McCarran is on course to slip nationally from No. 5 to No. 6 in passenger counts thanks to a surge in traffic through Denver International Airport.

The council's figures peg McCarran's passenger counts through September -- the latest numbers it has -- at 34.5 million fliers, up 3.5 percent from the first nine months of 2005. Denver's passenger load reached 36.4 million visitors, a 10.3 percent increase year-over year. The gap will be difficult to overcome in the fourth quarter, Jones said.

Despite airport officials' predictions that passenger counts will jump another 4 percent or so in 2007, McCarran is unlikely to boost incoming flights enough to land at No. 4 on the Federal Aviation Administration's list of busiest airports. It's a tough gap to close. The administration's data show that Los Angeles International had a 37,368-flight edge over McCarran, up slightly from the 36,227-flight advantage the Los Angeles airport posted over McCarran in 2005. And unlike some of its major competitors, McCarran is landlocked and has a runway-imposed ceiling for the number of flights it can accept.

Atlanta and Chicago have run neck-and-neck in recent years to claim the title of the nation's -- and therefore, the world's -- busiest airport in number of flights handled. Atlanta already claimed to be the world's busiest airport in terms of passengers. The FAA does not maintain passenger statistics.

Atlanta airport spokeswoman Sterling Payne cited two reasons for the airport's ranking: Its "capacity and efficiency."

She said opening a fifth runway in May benefited the airport and last year's expansion of international flights by Delta Air Lines, which has its primary hub in Atlanta, also helped Atlanta's airport remain the nation's busiest.

O'Hare spokeswoman Wendy Abrams said in a statement that officials there were not surprised that the Atlanta airport had more flights in 2006.

"O'Hare's flight restrictions, which are scheduled to expire next year, have limited our ability to land and depart aircraft and, ultimately, meet the demand for air service that continues to grow at our airport," Abrams said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

LAS VEGAS BUMP

Data from the Federal Aviation Administration show no movement in the ranks of the nation's busiest airports. But business is down at most of the country's key airports, with McCarran International Airport turning in one of the few positive performances in 2006.