Cairo, Dubai and London Heathrow lead busiest air routes as Asia flights slump

Covid travel restrictions have seen almost all the 10 busiest international air routes replaced – with the Middle East taking over from eastern Asia as the location for the links with most passengers.

The schedule analyst OAG has calculated the world’s 10 busiest international air routes over the past 12 months, which The Independent has compared with the pre-Covid table.

The only routes over the past year with more than three million passengers are Cairo to Jeddah (3,234,683) and Dubai to Riyadh (3,191,090).

Between the Egyptian capital and the Saudi Red Sea port, there are 35 daily flights.

Cairo and Dubai are the most prominent starting points, with Saudi Arabia featuring heavily.

“This shift in focus to the Middle East partly reflects the slower pace of a travel recovery across Asia, where previously many of the key Asian trunk routes dominated the busiest international routes,” says OAG.

Mainland China is closed to international visitors, while Japan and South Korea have only recently reopened. Hong Kong is not yet welcoming tourists in significant numbers.

The compilers attribute the presence of Jeddah and Riyadh in the list to “the ambitions of Saudi Arabia towards their Vision 2030 goal which will see air traffic grow substantially in the next decade.

London Heathrow makes two appearances in the top 10, with links to Dubai and New York JFK.

Hong Kong, which appeared three times in the 2019 list, no longer makes the the top 10. Neither does Seoul Incheon, the main international airport for South Korea, which previously made two showings.

The only route from the 2019 top 10 that remains is Kuala Lumpur-Singapore which slips from first place to fifth. OAG says: “In 2019, carriers operated 82 daily flights between the two cities, however in the last 12 months this has averaged just 33 flights per day.”

The US appears twice: third for the Heathrow-JFK route, seventh for the link between Orlando and San Juan, the capital of Puerto Rico.

The compilers say that the key unserved international link from the UK is from London Heathrow to Kathmandu in Nepal. In the past year, says OAG, 90,000 passengers have travelled between the two airports with a change of planes somewhere. It represents an average of 247 people per day.

Previous position in bracket

Source: OAG