The World’s Busiest Flight Routes For 2025 Have Landed!
Singapore, 24 December 2025 – Welcome to OAG’s annual analysis of the world’s busiest flight routes, providing a comprehensive view of route performance and trends.
The Busiest Flight Routes of 2025 examines airline capacity across the world’s most popular air routes, using seat capacity data from January to December 2025 - powered by OAG’s Global Airline Scedules Data – we have ranked the busiest flight routes in the world. Also included:
2024 and 2019 capacity data to enable year-on-year (YoY) and pre-pandemic comparisons.
Top domestic routes in China and the USA - the world's two largest aviation markets.
*New for 2025* airfare data on the top routes, enabling a year-on-year comparison of lowest average one-way airfares ($).
So, let’s jump to the data and insights…
WHAT WERE THE BUSIEST AIRLINE ROUTES OF 2025?
Nine of the Top Ten Busiest Routes operate in the Asia Pacific region.
The busiest airline route of 2025 is Jeju (CJU) to Seoul Gimpo (GMP):
This route has 14.4 million scheduled seats in 2025, this is equivalent to almost 39,000 daily seats operating on this short sector of just 243 nautical miles.
Capacity on the route is 1% above 2024 levels, but remains 17% behind 2019 levels.
Seven carriers operate on this very competitive route.
Airfares have dropped by 11% year-on year to $44 one-way.
The second and third placed busiest routes are both in Japan - which continues to maintain a strong position despite an extensive high speed rail network covering the country:
Sapporo New Chitose (CTS) to Tokyo Haneda (HND) is in second place with a staggering 12.1 million seats in 2025; up 1% year-on-year and only 3% below pre-pandemic volumes, indicating near-full recovery.
Fukuoka (FUK) to Tokyo Haneda (HND) is in third place growing by 1% vs 2024 with 11.5 million seats scheduled in 2025, this exceeds 2019 levels by 1%, making it one of the few major domestic routes to surpass pre-pandemic capacity.
Vietnam’s largest domestic route between Hanoi (HAN) and Ho Chi Minh City (SGN) is the fourth busiest route:
1 million seats were scheduled in 2025, a 4% increase in year-on-year and 8% above 2019 levels.
This route is highly competitive with six carriers operating in 2025.
Airfares on this route have decreased by 11% year-on-year with the average one-way ticket costing $67.
The fastest growing route in the top ten is fifth placed Jeddah (JED) to Riyadh (RUH):
Saudi Arabia’s flagship domestic route between the two largest cities in the Kingdom is the only route in the top ten outside of Asia Pacific.
The route has increased by 13% YoY with 9.8 million seats in 2025 - in line with overall domestic growth this year in Saudi Arabia - and is now 22% above 2019 levels.
Average economy airfares have also increased year-on-year by 27% to $95 one-way.
Three airlines operate on this 460 mile route
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