Before the decade of political and military turmoil, the Felix-Houphouet-Boigny airport was among the most important in West Africa, with passenger traffic exceeding one million travelers in the late 1990s. The succession of political and military crises seriously affected the country's image and reduced the importance of the airport in the sub-region in terms of traffic, but in recent years, as stability and strong economic growth have returned, airport traffic has been growing at a fast pace, and is now at its highest ever. In 2017, the airport handled 2.070 million passengers, the highest number in its history.