Have you ever looked at the departure boards at the airport, seeing the same places appear over and over again, and wondered which international airline has the most flight traffic in the world? A recent study by flight analytics firm OAG has revealed just the answer to that question.
Adding up the number of seats booked per month for each flight, OAG has announced the world's busiest airlines in 2022, and the number one spot isn't necessarily what you'd expect.
The airline between the Egyptian capital of Cairo and the Saudi Arabian port city of Jeddah took first place, with over 3.2 million passengers making the journey over the past year.
In 2019 (the last year that air traffic was at comparable levels), the list of airlines with the most flight traffic looked very, very different. Eight of the ten busiest air routes in the world for 2019 were in Asia, with flights between Kuala Lumpur and Singapore taking the top spot.
Asia has fallen in the rankings mainly due to the slow recovery from the pandemic. Not only is China still largely closed to international travelers, but Japan, Hong Kong and South Korea are still not welcoming visitors at the same levels as before.
However, you may find some problems with the methodology used by the OAG. Determining these results based on reserved seats rather than actual passenger numbers poses a problem, as many aircraft may fly between two destinations without actually having the planned number of passengers on board.
That said, reserved seats still remain a relatively good indicator of overall traffic.
Below are the ten busiest airlines in the world right now, along with the number of seats booked on these flights over the past 12 months.
Cairo – Jeddah (3,234,683 seats)
Dubai - Riyadh (3,191,090 seats)
London Heathrow – New York JF K (2,848,044 seats)
London Heathrow – Dubai (2,697,593 seats)
Kuala Lumpur – Singapore (2,443,176 seats)
Dubai – Jeddah (2,425,930 seats)
Orlando – San Juan (2,099,234 seats)
Dubai – Mumbai (1,977,537 seats)
Cairo - Riyadh (1,913,991 seats)
Dubai – Delhi (1,898,749 seats) / Time Out