Dubai airport featured amongst 5 of 10 busiest global routes

DUBAI - In another distinction, Dubai International Airport (DXB) has been featured in five of the top 10 global busiest routes in terms of seats.

According to the rankings released by flights database company OAG, Dubai saw strong passenger traffic growth on Gulf and Indian routes following the recovery in the aviation sector.

OAG - which provides data on global flight information, airports and airlines -  stated that Dubai-Riyadh was the second busiest route last year worldwide, with 40 flights per day and 3.191 million seats.

Moreover, Dubai-London Heathrow and Dubai-Jeddah were the fourth and sixth busiest routes with 2.697 million and 2.425 seats, respectively. Meanwhile, Mumbai-Dubai and Delhi-Dubai were the eighth and 10th busiest routes globally in terms of seat capacity at 1.977 million and 1.898 million, respectively.

The company highlighted that Cairo-Jeddah was the busiest route with 3.234 million seats globally during the 12-month period; the route has 35 daily flights.

The data features scheduled seats between the period from October 2021 and September 2022 and somewhat bolsters the official figures released by the Federal Authority for Identity and Citizenship.

According to those figures, Dubai received 23,672,468 (2.3 million) passengers in 2022 through different ports. Of these, 21,817,022 arrived through Dubai’s two airports.

It merits mention that the United Arab Emirates made a swift recovery in the backdrop of tourism and aviation after the Covid-19 pandemic dent a severe blow to the travel industry worldwide. 

The recovery was supported by carriers which brought back their capacity at a fast pace after the pandemic.

OAG said the Middle East plays an important role in aviation globally with four of the top 10 high-density routes being within the region.

“This shift in focus to the Middle East partly reflects the slower pace of a travel recovery across Asia, where previously many of the key Asian trunk routes dominated the busiest international routes, and the ambitions of Saudi Arabia towards their Vision 2030 goal which will see air traffic grow substantially in the next decade,” OAG said.

Interestingly, Dubai-Los Angeles was the 10th longest route served by airlines with a seating capacity of 30,960 as of September 2022.

It is to be highlighted that the Covid-19 pandemic has altogether changed the rankings and as per OAG, the busiest international route in 2019 was between Kuala Lumpur and Singapore Changi

(KUL-SIN). In 2019, carriers operated 82 daily flights between the two cities, however in the last 12 months this has averaged just 33 flights per day.