Coronavirus: the world’s busiest airline routes during the time of Covid-19
- Asia is the stand-out as domestic routes start to recover from a pandemic that grounded thousands of planes
- International air travel, however, remains severely hamstrung, with nearly a third of the world’s passenger fleet currently in storage
International flights have felt the impact most acutely due to border controls and mandatory quarantine requirements; domestic routes are starting to recover as people are generally able to move more freely within their countries. Asia is a stand-out, home to all 10 of the world’s busiest domestic routes this month, according to OAG Aviation Worldwide.
That is more than the top 10 international routes combined. Jeju-Seoul was the world’s busiest domestic route last year, pre-pandemic, with over 17 million seats, or about 48,000 on average a day.
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International air travel, however, is severely hamstrung and the November numbers remain measly. The busiest route this month is set to be Cairo-Jeddah with 147,950 seats, which at those levels would not make it into the top 10 US services.
Hong Kong-Taipei is eighth on the international list with 93,922 seats. That is a sharp fall from last year, when it was the world’s busiest international route with almost 8 million seats, about 22,000 a day, according to OAG.
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Separately, aviation analytics company Cirium said this week that 31 per cent of the world’s passenger plane fleet was in storage as of November 11, or a little over 8,100 aircraft.
The proportion is more than 35 per cent in Europe, where many countries are struggling to contain a resurgent virus and imposing lockdowns.
Only 21 of the planes operated by carriers in the Asia-Pacific region were inactive as of last Wednesday, Cirium said.