The busiest flight routes in 2023? Within Asia mostly, as the skies over Korea, Japan, Singapore, Malaysia and China buzz again with jetliners

The skies over Asia have been crowded this year, with nine of 10 of the world’s busiest domestic flight routes and nine of the 10 busiest international flight routes found within the continent, according to research released this week by air travel analytics platform OAG.

As in both 2019 and 2022, the busiest route overall – defined as that with the largest volume of scheduled airline seats in 2023, for flights in both directions – has been that between Jeju International and Seoul Gimpo airports in South Korea, with 13,728,786 seats having been available.

This is all the more remarkable given that the flight capacity between these airports in 2023 has been 21 per cent lower than in 2019 before the Covid-19 pandemic.

Five other routes in the domestic top 10 have also seen capacity reduced in the same period, but not by as much – Mumbai to Delhi’s 12 per cent has been the next biggest fall.

Four routes have seen an increase in air capacity between 2019 and 2023, with that in Indonesia between Jakarta and Denpasar International in Bali rising by eight per cent, to 7,190,961 seats.

The second and third busiest domestic routes are both in Japan: Sapporo New Chitose to Tokyo Haneda (11,936,302) and Fukuoka to Tokyo Haneda (11,264,229).

Seoul’s Gimpo airport had the busiest domestic flight route in the world in 2023, to Jeju International Airport. Photo: Shutterstock

In an earlier report, OAG named Tokyo Haneda Airport as the third busiest airport in the world this year (behind Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson, in the United States, and Dubai), with annual total airline capacity of 52.6 million seats.

The route between Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia and Singapore Changi has seen more seats available than any other international route this year (4,891,952).

Cairo in Egypt to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia (4,795,712) and Hong Kong to Taipei Taoyuan (4,568,280) round out the top three.

Back in 2019, Hong Kong to Taipei Taoyuan was the busiest international route, according to OAG, but capacity between the cities, an hour and 45 minutes apart, has dropped by 43 per cent since then.

Within mainland China, the busiest air routes have been Beijing to Shanghai Hongqiao (8,355,225), Guangzhou to Shanghai Hongqiao (7,162,999) and Shanghai Hongqiao to Shenzhen (6,969,789).

By contrast, the busiest route this year in the United States, which has something of a frequent-flier reputation, between the Hawaiian airports of Honolulu and Kahului, has seen capacity of just 3,612,212.

Tokyo’s Haneda Airport, the world’s third busiest. Photo: Shutterstock

OAG ranks three routes in the Chinese top 10 for 2023 that were not on that list in 2019: Hangzhou to Shenzhen (4,281,873), Guangzhou to Beijing Daxing (4,269,799), and Beijing Daxing to Shenzhen (3,302,381).

The annual Busiest Routes report is collated from OAG’s monthly Busiest Routes reports, which are analysed in the first week of each month.

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