The world’s busiest air routes for 2024 named

The Sydney-Melbourne route remains one of the world’s busiest despite the number of airline seats still being lower than before the pandemic.

Aviation data provider OAG’s annual report shows Sydney-Melbourne was the world’s fifth-busiest route in 2024. It had 9,217,377 seats available this year, down 7 per cent on 2019 and down 1 per cent on last year’s numbers.

Qantas’ domestic terminal at Sydney Airport. The Sydney-Melbourne route remained the world’s fifth busiest in 2024.Credit: Getty Images

The world’s busiest route was from South Korea’s capital, Seoul, to the holiday island of Jeju. It had 14,183,719 seats. The route has been the No.1 busiest for many years, except for during the pandemic.

To determine the busiest international and domestic flight routes, OAG analysed the volume of scheduled airline seats from January to December 2024. The routes listed reflect round-trip flights rather than one-ways in a single direction.

Competition was reduced on the Sydney-Melbourne route this year. Regional airline Rex collapsed in July after an attempt to break into capital city routes including Sydney-Melbourne.

Aviation expert Professor Rico Merkert, from the University of Sydney, said the business of the route would continue to make it attractive to new competitors, but he said barriers to entry, such as the market power of the two airline groups that currently control the route, Qantas and Virgin Australia, were significant.

Merkert also said congestion and a lack of landing slots at Sydney Airport also contributed to a lack of opportunities for growth.

Sydney’s second international airport, Western Sydney International Airport, is due to open in late 2026.

According to Bureau of Infrastructure and Transport Research Economics data the cheapest airfares on the Sydney-Melbourne route increased by 3.3 per cent between July, the last month when Rex was flying between the two cities, and October.

Apart from Sydney-Melbourne, every other route in the world’s top 10 busiest was in Asia, a sign of a long-awaited travel comeback for Asia. And one doesn’t even feature a business travel hub at all, proving that leisure continues to outshine corporate trips four years after the pandemic brought it all to a standstill.

“With the Asia Pacific region very close to a full recovery, the busiest routes are concentrated in the familiar major hubs of Hong Kong, Seoul Incheon and Singapore,” said John Grant, chief analyst at OAG, in a release.

The Hong Kong to Taipei route is once again the world’s busiest international flight route, which is a title it last claimed in 2019. This year, that single two-hour trip represented a total of 6.8 million available seats. Following in second place is Cairo to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, which has had a 62 per cent increase over 2019 levels. In third place is Seoul to Tokyo Narita, which counts 5.4 million scheduled seats or a 69 per cent increase over pre-pandemic numbers, according to the report. Dubai to Riyadh is the sixth-busiest flight route.

“One of the most interesting developments is the growth in regional Middle East markets with a particular emphasis on Saudi Arabia, where the Vision 2030 project continues to drive both business and leisure demand,” Grant said. Yet, it isn’t businesspeople flying between corporate hubs like Riyadh and Dubai driving the region’s largest flight volumes at OAG’s No. 2 spot; it is travellers heading between Jeddah and Cairo, a route that seems to point mostly to holidays.

Rounding out the list is a longtime high-ranking route: New York JFK to London Heathrow. It’s the only transatlantic trip to rank among the top 10 busiest flights. It had four million scheduled seats, a 5 per cent increase over 2019 levels, and it is the only listed route with points in either Europe or North America.

Here’s how the top 10 shook out this year on domestic and international routes.

Top 10 busiest domestic flight routes of 2024

1. Jeju International-Seoul Gimpo: 14.18 million seats
2. Sapporo New Chitose-Tokyo Haneda: 11.93 million seats
3. Fukuoka-Tokyo Haneda: 11.33 million seats
4. Hanoi-Ho Chi Minh City: 10.63 million seats
5. Melbourne-Sydney: 9.22 million seats
6. Jeddah-Riyadh: 8.7 million seats
7. Tokyo Haneda-Okinawa Naha: 8 million seats
8. Mumbai-Delhi: 7.96 million seats
9. Beijing-Shanghai Hongqiao: 7.71 million seats
10. Guangzhou Baiyun-Shanghai Hongqiao: 7 million seats

Top 10 busiest international flight routes of 2024

1. Hong Kong International-Taiwan Taoyuan: 6.8 million seats
2. Cairo-Jeddah: 5.47 million seats
3. Incheon, Seoul-Narita , Tokyo: 5.4 million seats
4. Kuala Lumpur-Singapore: 5.38 million seats
5. Incheon, Seoul-Kansai International, Osaka: 4.98 million seats
6. Dubai-Riyadh: 4.3 million seats
7. Bangkok-Hong Kong International: 4.2 million seats
8. Jakarta-Singapore: 4.07 million seats
9. John F. Kennedy International, New York-Heathrow, London: 4.01 million seats
10. Bangkok-Singapore: 4.03 million seats

with Bloomberg