Travel and aviation analysts OAG have released their annual review of the world’s busiest flight routes and airports, and some may find the results surprising.
The analysts compared the routes by volume of scheduled airline seats in the year 2023, using data for flights in both directions on each route, taken from the OAG schedules organiser.
Busiest international routes
The ten busiest air routes internationally (based on capacity) are all in the Middle East and Asia, apart from one: the JFK New York to London Heathrow route came in at number eight and, Forbes notes, was the only top ten route that carried more people (3,878,590) than benchmark pre-Covid year 2019 (by 1%). Most of the other routes in the international top ten still sit between 9% and 43% below their 2019 capacity.
Kuala Lumpur (KUL) to Singapore Changi (SIN) took the top spot for 2023 with 4.9 million seats, exchanging the number two spot with previous top dog Cairo (CAI) to Jeddah (JED). While there was only a hair’s breadth between the top two, Hong Kong (HKG) to Taipei (TPE), top in 2019, has dropped back a huge 43% and now sits in third place for 2023.
Shift in the sector?
OAG points out that a shift appears to be taking place in the sector: half the routes now in the 10 busiest routes did not figure at all in the top ten in 2019. What’s more, most of these newcomers take fairly high spots in the ranking: Cairo (CAI) to Jeddah (JED) in second place; Seoul Incheon (ICN) to Osaka Kansai (KIX) (fourth); Seoul Incheon (ICN) to Tokyo Narita (NRT), and fifth place. Bangkok (BKK) to Seoul Incheon (ICN) meanwhile made it into tenth place.
Busiest domestic routes
In terms of domestic routes, Asia dominates again. The three busiest routes domestically are to be found in Korea and Japan: as per 2019 and 2022, Jeju (CJU) to Seoul (GMP) is again number one with 13.7 million seats, though this is down by 21% on 2019’s capacity. Hokkaido Chitose (CTS) to Tokyo Haneda (HND) takes second place with 11.9 million seats, and Fukuoka (FUK) to Tokyo Haneda (HND) is the third busiest route with 11.3 million.
What about airports?
According to OAG, the world’s busiest airport is not Dubai, as many rank it, but in fact Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson, which, after taking the top spot in 2019 and 2022, racked up 61 million seats to perform the feat again in 2023. Dubai is second (57 million seats) and Tokyo third (53 million).
But when domestic capacity is taken out of the picture, then Dubai moves into the top spot (56.5 million seats) followed by London Heathrow, and Amsterdam’s Schiphol(37 million seats). Paris Charles de Gaulle airport (nearly 37 million seats) comes third.
