What are the 10 busiest international airline routes in the world?
OAG Aviation puts together a list each year of the busiest domestic and international routes in the world, based upon number of flights.
That’s not a perfect picture, since a 50-seat regional jet earns the same vote as a 400-seat A380. The study does, however, only include jet aircraft.
Here’s a look at the 10 busiest international airline routes in 2017, counting down from #10:
10. Bangkok (BKK) to Singapore (SIN) – 14,455 flights in 2017
9. Dublin (DUB) to London (LHR) – 14,556 flights in 2017
8. Beijing (PEK) to Hong Kong (HKG) – 14,592 flights in 2017
7. Hong Kong (HKG) to Seoul (ICN) – 16,366 flights in 2017
6. New York (LGA) to Toronto (YYZ) – 17,116 flights in 2017
5. Hong Kong (HKG) to Shanghai (PVG) – 20,818 flights in 2017
4. Jakarta (CGK) to Kuala Lumpur (KUL) – 20,890 flights in 2017
3. Jakarta (CGK) to Singapore (SIN) – 26,872 flights in 2017
2. Kulala Lumpur (KUL) to Singapore (SIN) – 29,383 flights in 2017
1. Hong Kong (HKG) to Taipei (TPE) – 29,494 flights in 2017
Honorable Mention
You’ll notice only U.S. airport on the list, New York LGA. #12 on the list is New York JFK to London and #14 is Chicago ORD to Toronto YYZ. I found number #19 interesting: Cairo to Jeddah has 12,896 flight per year.
Notice all of these are fairly shorthaul routes. The longest rout in the top-10 list is Hong Kong to Seoul at 1,285 miles.
You can review the full list here.
See Also: The 10 Busiest International Airline Routes in the World
I guess they still think HK is not part of China.
i mean people from hong kong and people from china have two different passports so…..
Exactly.
This is kind of deceiving though. What if we went by number of passengers carried? JFK-LHR flies only wide-bodies whereas KUL-SIN and some of the other routes only fly narrow-bodies.
Also, I think most of us wish HK wasn’t part of China.
As I note, it’s one metric. Arguably not the most accurate, but it does give us some indication of how busy traffic is between two city pairs.
You are missing 1 important issue: cities with multiple airports such as London or New York are not combined.
If you would combine all London airports, they would dominate the list, especially flights like London-Paris, London-Amsterdam or London-Dublin.
I thought about that as well. But then it starts to become what you consider as part of the city and what not.
“Frankfurt” Hahn and “Brussel” Charleroi come to mind.
What was the peak traffic between TPE and HKG? As I recall, the traffic has declined over tr years because there exists now the ability to fly non stop between TPE and mainland China…
What is that picture of?
Singapore.