Revealed: the world’s busiest airline routes
Asia leads the world’s growth in travel and holds seven out of the 10 busiest inter-city routes.
In addition to the BRIC markets, Indonesia, the Philippines and Chile showed an impressive growth, according to analysis by the market intelligence report Amadeus Total Demand.
The review looks at trends in worldwide passenger demand between regions, countries and specific airports, comparing the full 2011 passenger volumes with 2010 data.
All figures relate to passengers travelling between a given origin and final destination airport, irrespective of the number of connecting stops.
The most important inter-regional growth patterns of last year are led by Asia.
Traffic between Asia and Europe, and between Asia and North America, grew by 9%.
Traffic between Asia and the Middle East grew 6% reaching 38 million travellers in the year.
Traffic between North America and Europe remains the busiest inter-regional flow with over 60 million passengers in 2011, followed by Asia and Europe with over 53 million, and Latin America and North America with 47 million passengers.
In terms of connecting traffic, over 50% of all passengers in the triangle between Asia, Europe and North America change aircraft at least once.
On the other hand, only 7% of all passengers travelling within Asia travel with a connecting flight, compared to 10% in Europe and 31% in North America.
The largest airports in Asia have a lower percentage of connecting traffic than the North American and European hubs.
The average connecting rate of the 10 busiest airports in Asia is 19% compared with 32% for the top ten hubs in Europe and 45% in North America.
The 2011 country statistics reveal, unsurprisingly, that the strongest growth in absolute passengers is led by the BRIC countries.
China registered an additional 19 million in 2011 than 2010, Brazil, 12 million, India eight million and Russia six million.
Indonesia was the 5th strongest growth market with an additional five million passengers in 2011.
Brazil (17%), India (13%) and Russia (15%) also featured in the top 10 fastest-growing countries by % growth.
Chile (21%), the Philippines (15%) and Indonesia (11%) are also among the fastest growing travel markets. Egypt and Japan are among the fastest shrinking markets, probably due to the Arab Spring and the tsunami.
The strongest traffic in between cities takes place within the same country.
From the world’s top ten inter-city routes, seven are within the domestic borders of Asian countries, out of which three are in Japan.
In terms of volume, the route between Jeju and Seoul is the most important (almost 10 million passengers) followed by Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo (about eight million passengers).
by TravelMole Asia
Bev
Editor in chief Bev Fearis has been a travel journalist for 25 years. She started her career at Travel Weekly, where she became deputy news editor, before joining Business Traveller as deputy editor and launching the magazine’s website. She has also written travel features, news and expert comment for the Guardian, Observer, Times, Telegraph, Boundless and other consumer titles and was named one of the top 50 UK travel journalists by the Press Gazette.
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