World's busiest international passenger routes revealed

As 275 airlines gather in Barcelona over the coming days for World Routes 2017, including the world's top ten carriers by capacity, Routesonline can reveal the 20 busiest non-stop international passenger routes on earth.

With an average of 80 flights per day - that's one every 18 minutes - Hong Kong (HKG) - Taipei Taiwan Taoyuan (TPE) was the busiest during July 2017, the research has found.

A total of 451,801 passengers travelled the 802km between the densely-populated autonomous territory of Hong Kong and Taipei, the capital of Taiwan. The July total was 4.6 percent higher than June and 129,313 more passengers than the second busiest international route on earth, Jakarta Soekarno-Hatta (CGK) - Singapore Changi (SIN).

Cathay Pacific Airways had the most capacity on the route with 309,439 available seats, followed by China Airlines with 182,986. Other operators to fly HKG-TPE are EVA Airways, Hong Kong Airlines and Cathay Dragon.

https://infogram.com/untitled-1gk92exj7we7m16

As with the busiest overall routes in the world, services in the Asia Pacific region dominated the rankings with the entire top ten taken up by routes in Asia, and just two from outside the region making the top 20. Perhaps surprisingly, neither of these routes were in North or South America.

At 12 was Moscow Domodedovo (DME) - Simferopol (SIP), linking Russia's capital city with Crimea, while at 16th was the leisure route of Duesseldorf (DUS) - Palma de Mallorca (PMI), linking German's seventh most populous city with the holiday island of Mallorca.

The busiest international routes were calculated by using OAG to find the top 100 routes in the world by capacity in July 2017 and then ranking them by passenger statistics on Sabre.

https://infogram.com/top-international-routes-july-2017-1ggk269e883j2n0

The most expensive route in the top 20 was Hong Kong (HKG) - Beijing Capital (PEK) - operated by Cathay Dragon, Air China, Cathay Pacific, China Southern Airlines and Hong Kong Airlines - with an average base fare of $333.08. The cheapest was Palma de Mallorca (PMI) - Duesseldorf (DUS), operated by a string of low-cost carrers including NIKI, Eurowings and Germania.


The data:

Rank Route July 2017 June 2017 Distance (km)
Available capacity Passengers Base fare ($) Passengers Base fare ($)
1 Hong Kong (HKG) - Taipei Taiwan Taoyuan (TPE) 701892 451801 94.25 432128 92.57 802
2 Jakarta Soekarno-Hatta (CGK) - Singapore Changi (SIN) 482226 322488 127.85 295880 123.09 896
3 Kuala Lumpur (KUL) - Singapore Changi (SIN) 468756 269395 77.97 241931 74.78 296
4 Seoul Incheon (ICN) - Osaka Kansai (KIX) 328374 233920 109.96 211902 131.87 872
5 Hong Kong (HKG) - Shanghai Pudong (PVG) 405424 225888 220.07 233561 200.5 1247
6 Taipei Taiwan Taoyuan (TPE) - Osaka Kansai (KIX) 269647 200131 208.60 198981 194.5 1714
7 Seoul Incheon (ICN) - Hong Kong (HKG) 372471 197935 160.04 200385 166.08 2080
8 Bangkok Suvarnabhumi (BKK) - Hong Kong (HKG) 405956 197313 162.25 191738 140.89 1694
9 Taipei Taiwan Taoyuan (TPE) - Tokyo Narita (NRT) 251584 197175 238.74 183917 253.9 2193
10 Kuala Lumpur (KUL) - Jakarta Soekarno-Hatta (CGK) 312296 195988 62.93 166515 64.78 1142
11 Hong Kong (HKG) - Singapore Changi (SIN) 356207 187128 242.15 171961 241.44 2587
12 Moscow Domodedovo (DME) - Simferopol (SIP) 284362 186239 86.17 194459 81.03 1188
13 Singapore Changi (SIN) - Bangkok Suvarnabhumi (BKK) 310201 173660 133.06 181337 142.17 1431
14 Hong Kong (HKG) - Beijing Capital (PEK) 306205 169666 333.08 176880 344.82 2011
15 Seoul Gimpo (GMP) - Tokyo Intl (Haneda) 191994 166402 234.23 164768 239.39 1194
16 Palma de Mallorca (PMI) - Duesseldorf (DUS) 191919 165758 44.95 157063 48.45 1362
17 Seoul Incheon (ICN) - Bangkok Suvarnabhumi (BKK) 240393 163274 251.15 150651 243.7 3681
18 Osaka Kansai International (KIX) - Hong Kong (HKG) 255378 163154 247.89 145716 242.62 2484
19 Hong Kong (HKG) - Manila Ninoy Aquino (MNL) 307335 162647 93.14 143990 101.98 1145
20 Manila Ninoy Aquino (MNL) - Singapore Changi (SIN) 234402 156522 178.04 154267 195.02 2383
David Casey

David Casey is Editor in Chief of Routes, the global route development community's trusted source for news and information.