Top 5: The World's Busiest Flight Routes In September

The world has more than 12,000 international routes in September, the latest OAG data shows. But what about the most served? To work this out, I have used departing flights, although seats for sale could be used instead, perhaps also available seat miles/kilometers. As this article looks forward rather than backward, passengers could not be used. As ever, different measures result in different outcomes.

Top five international routes

The 12,000+ routes mentioned above have an average of nine weekly departing flights (double for both ways). In contrast, the top five below have 186 to 271. They are led by the short 184-mile (296 km) hop from Singapore to Malaysia’s capital, Kuala Lumpur. All are airport-level international routes. Results would be different at the city level.

Photo: EvrenKalinbacak I Shutterstock.

The most-served international airport pair involving the US is New York LaGuardia to Toronto Pearson, in ninth place. Perhaps surprisingly, the most popular involving Europe is London Heathrow to New York JFK, in tenth. It has 157 departures a week (obviously, many short-haul city pairs would beat it).

Singapore Changi to Kuala Lumpur Intl.

Seven airlines operate between the two airports, with a breakdown below. The market is led by Malaysian operators, which provide more than six in ten flights. It also remains heavily driven by LCCs (of different strains), which have 58% of services.

The significant increase by Singapore Airlines is, of course, because Silk Air no longer exists. In 2019, the two operators had 70 weekly flights, but there are now 47, a third fewer.

Photo: Kittikun Yoksap I Shutterstock.

Seats for sale are down by the same amount, as seats per departure remain at 189 from big narrowbody use. Of course, Singapore Airlines also uses widebodies, with the Airbus A350-900 scheduled alongside the Boeing 737-800 in September.

Ethiopian Airlines’ fifth-freedom operation

If an operator is scheduled in a particular market but does not have permission to sell tickets, I would remove them. This does not apply to Ethiopian Airlines, Africa’s largest carrier, which serves Singapore-Kuala Lumpur on a fifth-freedom basis.

Using the 787-8, the routing is Addis Ababa-Singapore-Kuala Lumpur-Singapore-Addis Ababa. Having arrived from Africa at 14:50, ET638 leaves Changi for Malaysia at 15:50.

Flight ET639 arrives back in Singapore at 00:35, departing for home at 02:00 and returning at 05:50, local. Passengers and freight can then transfer across most of the vast African continent.

Which of the five routes have you flown? Let us know in the comments.

Sources of information: OAG, Google Flights.