The year 2023 witnessed a resurgence in travel, particularly in the Asia-Pacific region, following a multi-year downturn in flights due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The busiest international route of 2023 was the one-hour flight between Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Malaysia and Singapore’s Changi Airport, as revealed by a recent study by OAG, a worldwide travel data provider. OAG's yearly summary, published on Wednesday, which calculates the number of scheduled airline seats between destinations each month, discovered that the Kuala Lumpur-Singapore route had 4.9 million scheduled seats this year, marking a 50% rise from 2022.
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Seven out of the ten most frequented international routes and nine out of the ten most active domestic routes were located in the Asia-Pacific region, which was slower to reopen compared to Europe and the U.S. following the pandemic. The previous year, the only international route from the Asia-Pacific region that made it to the top 10 was the one between Kuala Lumpur and Singapore, which was ranked fifth. The sole Western flight that made it to the top 10 busiest international routes of 2023 was the one between New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport and London’s Heathrow Airport.
No domestic routes within the U.S. made it to the list of the busiest for the year, which were all in the Asia-Pacific or Middle East regions. However, Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport retained its position as the world's busiest airport, according to OAG, with a capacity of 61 million airline seats for 2023. This Georgia-based airport was also the busiest according to OAG in 2019 and 2022.
Within the U.S., the most active domestic route of 2023 was between Honolulu and Kahului, with 3.6 million scheduled airline seats covering the distance between these Hawaiian cities. The Atlanta-Orlando and Los Angeles-Las Vegas routes were next in line, each having approximately 3.5 million scheduled airline seats flown between them.