A new survey to identify the planet’s busiest passenger flight routes reveals a list largely made up of Asian destinations, but a popular Australian aeroplane route is now second busiest globally.
A 450-kilometre journey from Seoul’s Gimpo Airport to the island of Jeju, located off the coast of the Korean Peninsula, has been ranked as the busiest scheduled passenger route in the world for 2017.
Last year more than 13.4 million people travelled the short haul route from South Korea’s capital city to the idyllic island, dubbed “the Hawaii of Korea.”
The hugely popular journey has an average of 180 scheduled flights each day, or one every eight minutes.
Its nearest rival was the Australian aeroplane route between Melbourne Airport and Sydney Kingsford Smith Airport which transported just over nine million passengers in 2017, according to the study by UK-based aviation network developer Routes.
In total, Asia-Pacific accounted for more than 70% of the 100 busiest routes by passenger numbers.
Unsurprisingly, Japan was declared one of the busiest destinations in the world, with three of its domestic flight routes among the most popular — Sapporo’s New Chitose Airport to Tokyo Haneda Airport (8,726,502 passengers,) Fukuoka Airport to Tokyo Haneda (7,864,000 passengers) and Tokyo Haneda to Okinawa’s Naha Airport (5,269,481 passengers.)
When it comes to the top 10 busiest international routes, the report lists the following:
- Hong Kong to Taiwan Taoyuan – 6,719,030 passengers
- Jakarta to Singapore Changi – 4,810,602 passengers
- Hong Kong to Shanghai Pudong – 4,162,347 passengers
- Kuala Lumpur to Singapore Changi – 4,108,824 passengers
- Bangkok Suvarnabhumi to Hong Kong – 3,438,628 passengers
- Dubai to London Heathrow – 3,210,121 passengers
- Hong Kong to Seoul Incheon -3,198,132 passengers
- Hong Kong to Singapore Changi – 3,147,384 passengers
- New York JFK to London Heathrow – 2,972,817 passengers
- Hong Kong – Beijing Capital – 2,962,707 passengers
