The world’s most popular airline routes are almost all in the Asia-Pacific region

The holiday season is always a pretty hellish period for traveling in the US, but even the busiest flight paths America has to offer can’t hold a cabin light to the world’s most popular routes, like Hong Kong to Taipei, which had a staggering 6.78 million seats scheduled in 2024.

That’s per OAG’s latest annual report on the busiest flight routes in the world, with the travel-data company’s scheduled flight figures revealing that 7 of the top 10 most popular round trips were all within the Asia-Pacific region. Another two, Dubai to Riyadh and Cairo to Jeddah, were in the Middle East, while JFK to London Heathrow was the only international flight from North America and Europe to make it into the annual ranking.

While the 4.01 million scheduled seat tally for the transatlantic route is still a lot — equivalent to roughly 11,000 people taking that flight every day — it’s not that far ahead of the passenger count for America’s most popular domestic routes. There were 3.48 million scheduled seats for passengers looking to go between Atlanta and Orlando in 2024, for instance, while those who wanted to make the journey from Sin City to Tinseltown would be on America’s third busiest airline route, with 3.36 million scheduled seats between LAS and LAX.