The most popular flight route takes only 60 minutes. Nevertheless, it is the world’s busiest air route. The annual review of the world ’ s busiest flight routes and airports of 2023 is now revealed.
It is the global travel data provider, OAG, which is now presenting the figures for global air traffic in 2023.
In its annual report published on Wednesday, the OAG could conclude that 2023 has been a year of recovery in air travel, particularly for routes in the Asia-Pacific region.
Air traffic has increased significantly, with the ten most popular flights reporting passenger increases ranging from 20 to 356 percent.
The same applies to the busiest airports.
The climate crisis – was it last year?
The report gives an immediate impression of the climate concern and the resulting flight shame, something we have put behind us.
Which flight route was the most popular in 2023?
It is the route between Kuala Lumpur and Singapore, a 60-minute flight that 4.9 million passengers chose this year. This is an increase of 50 percent from 2022.
Seven of the world’s top 10 busiest international routes and nine of the 10 busiest domestic routes were in the Asia-Pacific region. During the reopening after the pandemic, it was in particular these routes that lagged behind Europe and the United States.
Last year, the only Asia-Pacific international route in the top-10 was the route between Kuala Lumpur and Singapore, which ranked fifth.
Asia dominates
Asia and the Arab countries dominate this year’s top ten. The only Western flight to qualify for the top-10 list of the busiest international routes in 2023 is the route between New York JFK and London Heathrow. This flight selected 3.9 million passengers. That is 24 percent more than last year.
Busiest flights in 2023
- Kuala Lumpur-Singapore 4.9 million passengers (+50 percent)
- Cairo-Jeddah 4.8 million (+38)
- Hong Kong-Taipei 4.6 million (+130)
- Seoul-Osaka 4.2 million (+356)
- Seoul-Tokyo 4.2 million (+227)
- Dubai-Riyadh 4.0 million (+20)
- Jakarta-Singapore 3.9 million (+81)
- New York-London 3.9 million (+24)
- Bangkok-Singapore 3.5 million (+47)
- Bangkok-Seoul 3.4 million (+111)
The busiest travel day in 2023
In 2023, the busiest travel day for the airlines was Friday 11 August. A total of 18,586,233 passengers traveled by plane this summer day. To put this number into perspective, the average daily capacity during the year was 16,582,222. That makes August 11 12 percent busier than the average travel day.
Conversely, the quietest travel day to travel by air was the third Saturday in 2023, at least taking the figures from OAG into account. A total of 13,967,001 seats were reserved on 21 January. This makes the day 16 percent less busy than the average for airlines.
Busiest airport in 2023
In terms of airport, Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport (ATL) was the world’s busiest airport in 2023.
Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport (ATL) was also the busiest global airport in 2022 and 2019.
A total of 61.2 million passengers traveled through the US airport in 2023. Capacity in ATL has increased by 12 percent since last year. This is only 3 percent below the 2019 level.
In 2019 before the corona pandemic, 63.3 million passengers traveled through ATL, while in 2022, 54.9 passengers traveled through ATL.
Most visited airports 2023
- Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson 61.2 million passengers (+12 percent)
- Dubai International 56.5 million (+25)
- Tokyo Haneda 52.7 million (+26)
- London Heathrow 49.4 million (+23)
- Dallas Fort Worth 48.1 million (+11)
- Denver International 46.7 million (+13)
- Istanbul Airport 46.4 million (+19)
- Los Angeles International 44.5 million (+11)
- Chicago O’Hare 43.7 million (+6)
- Guangzhou Airport 43.4 million (+36)
Also read about five out of the world’s ten most stressful airports are in Europe.