In 2024, the world's busiest airspace was in Asia, with all routes seeing an increase in seat capacity. — Getty Images/AFP
A pivotal year that affirmed a return to “normalcy” after the Covid-19 pandemic had brought tourism to a serious halt, 2024 was above all marked by record-breaking passenger numbers on flights in Asia, where all routes saw their seat capacity increase.
Travel experts’ predictions for 2025 are a-plenty. Toulouse, France will be the on-trend city-break destination this year according to Lonely Planet; Tirana in Albania is already the top of Kayak’s most popular destinations for next summer; Sumba in Indonesia was named as the must-see Asian destination in 2025 by Time Out.
But before you pack your bags again, it’s worth taking stock of what was most popular in 2024. You can see for yourself by looking at the number of visitors per country, or even by looking to the sky to see which areas of the planet were the most crowded.
The Official Airline Guide (OAG), the reference in this field thanks to its gigantic database of flight connections, has published a review of the busiest routes over the past year. Asia Pacific took the title as the region with the world’s busiest airspace, with all air travel across this sector seeing significant growth in seat capacity over the previous year.
The route between Hong Kong and Taipei, Taiwan with 6.8 million seats, was the most popular. The number of seats on board the airlines that made this trip jumped by 48% compared with 2023. Yet this capacity remains 15% below pre-pandemic levels in 2019.
The opposite is true for the third busiest air route, between Seoul (South Korea) and Tokyo (Japan). With 5.4 million seats, its capacity has expanded massively by 68% compared to 2019 (+30% compared to 2023). This is a trend that’s in line with the success of Japan as a tourist destination, which has broken attendance records.
Between January and November, the Japanese archipelago welcomed 33.4 million visitors. In the past, Japan had exceeded the 30 million mark only once since 1964. That was in 2019, when it set the now-surpassed record of 31.9 million international visitors.
On a global scale, seven out of 10 of the world’s busiest air routes are operated in Asia. In Africa and the Middle East, the trip between Cairo (Egypt) and Jeddah (Saudi Arabia) is the busiest.
Europe only sneaks into the top 10 with its connection between London and New York (in 10th place).
Meanwhile, Kuala Lumpur to Singapore was the Busiest International Airline Route in 2023; it is in fourth place in 2024 with 5.4 million seats, just 28,293 (0.5%) behind third place. – AFP Relaxnews
Top 10 busiest international flight routes in 2024
(ranked by seats; by OAG)
1 HKG-TPE (Hong Kong-Taipei): 6,781,577
2 CAI-JED (Cairo-Jeddah); 5,469,274
3 ICN-NRT (Seoul-Tokyo); 5,410,456
4 KUL-SIN (Kuala Lumpur-Singapore); 5,382,163
5 ICN-KIX (Seoul-Osaka); 4,982,769
6 DXB-RUH (Dubai-Riyadh); 4,306,599
7 BKK-HKG (Bangkok-Hong Kong); 4,201,802
8 CGK-SIN (Jakarta-Singapore); 4,069,071
9 BKK-SIN (Bangkok-Singapore); 4,033,344
10 JFK-LHR (New York-London); 4,011,235
