Middle East Dominates Rankings Of World’s Busiest Airline Routes

Flights between cities in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have become the busiest airline routes in the world, overtaking ones between Asian hubs that had been the leaders before the Covid-19 crisis.

The latest rankings were compiled by aviation industry specialists OAG, based on the routes with the largest number of scheduled seats in the 12 months from October 2021 to September 2022.

On that basis, the world’s busiest route was between the Egyptian capital Cairo and Saudi Arabia’s second city of Jeddah, on the Red Sea coast. There was an average of 35 daily flights between the two hubs over the past 12 months, with a total of 3.2 million scheduled seats. Nine carriers operate on this route, which is also ranked by OAG as the most competitive route in the world.

The second busiest route was also in the Middle East, connecting Dubai International airport in the UAE with King Khalid International airport in the Saudi capital Riyadh. There were 40 flights a day, a few more than on the Cairo-Jeddah route but with slightly fewer available seats at 3.19 million.

Of the other top ten routes, two more involved flights between Middle East hubs: Dubai-Jeddah and Cairo-Riyadh. A further three of the busiest routes linked Dubai to London, Mumbai and Delhi.

Overall, only three of the top ten routes did not involve a Middle East start or end point. They were: third-placed New York JFK-London Heathrow, with 2.8 million seats; fifth-placed Kuala Lumpur-Singapore (2.4 million seats); and seventh-placed Orlando-San Juan (2.1 million seats).

The Covid effect

The current rankings are markedly different to those before the Covid-19 pandemic, which saw aircraft grounded around the world.

Prior to the healthcare emergency, the busiest international route in 2019 was between Kuala Lumpur and Singapore Changi. In 2019, carriers operated 82 daily flights between the two cities, said OAG in its latest report, however in the last 12 months that has fallen to just 33 flights a day.

However, Asian markets are still the busiest in terms of purely domestic traffic, accounting for nine of the ten busiest domestic routes in the world. The busiest of all is between the South Korean capital Seoul and the leisure destination of Jeju, where airlines operated an average of 224 flights a day.

Three of the ten busiest domestic routes are in Japan, with others in South Korea, Vietnam, Australia, India, China and Indonesia.

The only domestic route in the top ten that is outside the Asia Pacific region is in Saudi Arabia, with nearly 100 flights a day between the country’s two largest cities of Jeddah and Riyadh.