If you think planes have got fuller and the skies busier over the past year, you’d be right — especially if you live in either Hong Kong or Taipei.
Travel intelligence company OAG has released its annual list of the world’s busiest flight routes — and the 105-minute hop between the two has topped the international route board, with nearly 7 million seats on sale in 2024.
The 6,781,577 seatmates have returned the route to its prepandemic popularity — HKG-TPE also topped the board in 2019. It was third last year.
Last year’s list was topped by Singapore-Kuala Lumpur, with a relatively few 4.9 million seats.
Second on the 24 list was Cairo-Jeddah, with nearly 5.5 million seats sold. The Egypt-Saudi Arabia route has had an astonishingly swift growth over the past five years, going from ranking 14th in 2019 to second place in 2023 and 2024.
Seoul took two of the next spots, with routes to Tokyo Narita and Osaka Kansai coming in at third and fourth respectively.
Singapore Changi airport — which had stormed the board in the 2023 rankings — took three spots in the top 10, with routes to Kuala Lumpur (fourth), Jakarta (eighth) and Bangkok (ninth).
The Middle East, Europe and even the US got a look in too, with Dubai-Riyadh at number six, and New York JFK-London Heathrow rounding out the top 10.
When it comes to domestic routes, the top three globally were all in Asia: Jeju International-Seoul Gimpo, Sapporo New Chitose-Tokyo Haneda, and Fukuoka-Tokyo Haneda. Jeju-Seoul has kept the crown of the world’s busiest domestic route, with 14.2 million seats – nearly 39,000 per day.
Analyzing routes per region, Cairo was Africa’s hub, with routes out of the Egyptian capital taking the top five spots for routes leaving the continent. London Heathrow dominated European routes, with JFK-LHR taking the top spot, followed by connections with Dubai and Dublin at number two and four respectively.
Latin America’s top route was between San Juan and Orlando, followed by Lima-Santiago, while Jeddah-Cairo and Dubai-Riyadh topped the Middle East routes. Jeddah to Riyadh is the fastest growing route in the top 10, with a 10% increase in capacity, year on year, to 8.7 million.
The rankings were compiled by calculating the volume of airline seats available in both directions on each route.
The swiftly expanding numbers — as well in the year-on-year bounce from 4.9 million to 6.78 million for the top-ranking route, Cairo-Jeddah is up by 1.3 million, and Asia Pacific routes have seen ”significant growth,” according to OAG’s press release — are less good news for the planet.
In 2022, aviation accounted for 2.1% of manmade carbon emissions worldwide, according to the Air Transport Action Group, and 3.5% of planet-warming emissions in total. At the time, Matteo Mirolo from Transport & Environment, which campaigns for cleaner transport, warned that the expanding industry was bad news.
“If we don’t do anything now, in a few years aviation will be one of the most significant contributing factors,” he said at the time.
“We shouldn’t look at the snapshot now. We should look at the forecast.”
