These Are the Busiest Air Routes in the World

  • Asia dominates list as world’s fastest-growing travel market
  • Jeju-Seoul and Melbourne-Sydney are planet’s busiest routes

Photographer: Brendon Thorne/Bloomberg

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The world’s busiest air route isn’t London to Paris or New York to Los Angeles, but the trip between Seoul and a tiny island off the coast of South Korea.

Planes made 65,000 trips between the Korean capital and Jeju island -- a journey of little more than an hour -- in 2017, equivalent to 178 flights a day, according to data from OAG Aviation Worldwide Ltd. That’s almost double the 35,000 trips on the busiest North American route: Los Angeles to San Francisco.