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

A flight route in Korea was the world’s busiest in 2023, followed by two connecting Tokyo Haneda Airport to elsewhere in Japan, a tally of available seats shows

Hong Kong to Taipei, the busiest international route pre-Covid, now ranks third; the busiest domestic routes in China had more capacity than any route in the US

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Jeju International Airport in South Korea is on the world’s busiest flight route in 2023. Asia dominates annual rankings of the 10 busiest domestic and international flight routes. Photo: Shutterstock

Published: 7:45pm, 21 Dec 2023Updated: 2:31pm, 4 Jan 2024

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).