SINGAPORE is on several of the world’s busiest international flight routes this year, according to a report released by global travel data platform OAG on Wednesday (Dec 18).
The city-state featured thrice in OAG’s list of top 10 busiest international flight routes globally for the year. The list ranks flight routes based on their number of seats, and is part of OAG’s annual Busiest Routes report. According to OAG’s website, the busiest air routes are defined as those with the largest volume of scheduled airline seats for 2024, and the data accounts for flights in both directions on all routes.
Globally, Singapore is the fourth-busiest international airline route for 2024 alongside Malaysia’s capital city of Kuala Lumpur, on the Kuala Lumpur to Singapore Changi route, which channelled 5.4 million seats through the year.
The route grew busier in 2024, with a 10 per cent higher volume of seats than the 4.9 million seats for 2023. This was despite falling three places from last year’s No 1. It was also the world’s second-busiest international airline route in 2019.
This year, it narrowly missed third place with only 0.5 per cent or 28,293 fewer seats than the third-busiest route from Seoul’s Incheon to Tokyo’s Narita.
The Hong Kong to Taipei route ranked first in this year’s list with a seat volume of 6.8 million, while the Cairo to Jeddah route came in second with a seat volume of 5.5 million.
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Singapore also appeared on two more of the top 10 busiest international airline routes for 2024 – the Jakarta to Singapore route, which ranked eighth with a 4.1 million seat volume, and the Bangkok to Singapore route in ninth place with a seat volume of four million.
The ranking of the year’s busiest airline routes were once more dominated by Asia-Pacific, OAG numbers showed. The region claimed spots in seven of the 10 busiest international routes, and nine of the 10 busiest domestic routes.
Commenting on Asia-Pacific’s performance, OAG chief analyst John Grant noted that the region was “very close to a full recovery”, with many of the world’s busiest routes concentrated in its major hubs of Hong Kong, Seoul Incheon and Singapore.
He added that “the composition of the supply on those routes is changing as the low-cost sector continues its growth at a faster rate than legacy”.
