1 LHR-JFK ~3,030,000 pax 5554 km
2 LHR-DXB ~2,610,000 pax 5505 km
3 LHR-LAX ~1,620,000 pax 8780 km
4 LHR-HKG ~1,570,000 pax 9647 km
5 HNL-NRT ~1,556, 000 pax 6146 km
6 JFK-CDG ~1,555,000 pax 5849 km
7 MEL-SIN ~1,540,000 pax 6025 km
8 SYD-SIN ~1,520,000 pax 6289 km
9 LHR-SIN ~1,420,000 pax 10,887 km
10 PTP-ORY ～1,300,000 pax, 6757 km



Notes:
• Again, this list is a piece of my manual work, as I did last year, based on a survey of publicly available data for 2018 released by UK's CAA, US DOT, Eurostat, Australia's BITRE, and other sources on wiki. It stands to be corrected, noting that slight discrepancies in numbers exist for some routes provided by different sources (e.g, LHR-JFK)
• "Longhaul" here refers to a route with a distance of over 5,000 km
• The pax traffic is two-way
• "Intercontinental " here denotes a concept of 7 continents on earth (with Hawaii considered as North American)

So, compared with the 2017 list A list of top 10 busiest intercontinental long-haul routes by 2017 pax traffic worldwide, the 2018 list got two new airport-pair entrants LHR-SIN, PTP-ORY, pushing off LHR-DOH, CDG-DXB. Meanwhile HNL-NRT dropped two spots as the route experienced a 10% decline in pax traffic YoY, as versus a 15% jump on LHR-SIN.

Thus all the top 4 routes involve LHR, foregrounding the dominating position of Heathrow in global intercontinental longhaul travel.

Well, unlike the US, where its population are somewhat evenly dispersed between west and east coast while at the same time a much bigger country physically. I am not surprised that LHR dominates the list since UKs population are centered in London.

Jefford717 wrote:

Well, unlike the US, where its population are somewhat evenly dispersed between west and east coast while at the same time a much bigger country physically. I am not surprised that LHR dominates the list since UKs population are centered in London.

Really? Are you sure? 8.1m people live in the greater London area of which a third live closer to stansted/Luton and a third live closer to Gatwick.
Taking Greater London population in total is 11%of the UKs population.
So a bit of a bold statement

Keep in mind list is airport pairs, not city pairs which produces partial list.
Many large markets like New York, Tokyo and other for example are not properly reflected as traffic is split over more than one airport.

great overview and thanks for consolidating the data!

massive performance for EK transporting millions between LHR-DXB and further to the world. surely, the O/D share is only minor (even compared to JFK or LAX).

stylo777 wrote:

great overview and thanks for consolidating the data!

massive performance for EK transporting millions between LHR-DXB and further to the world. surely, the O/D share is only minor (even compared to JFK or LAX).

LON-DXB O&D is much larger than you think. Many people from UK have investments and connection in DXB and it is true for people from UAE to have investments or connections in UK too.

Jefford717 wrote:

Well, unlike the US, where its population are somewhat evenly dispersed between west and east coast while at the same time a much bigger country physically. I am not surprised that LHR dominates the list since UKs population are centered in London.

The USA is too sparsely populated and too remote geographically to register here .... is there even a billion people in all of the Americas ? The vast majority of humanity lives in Eurasia , hence every one of these routes begins or ends in Eurasia

Is number 10 correct? I am stunned a small Caribbean port connecting to the second airport in Paris makes the list!!!

What's the frequency of ORY-PTP? Although flown on very high density config, is surprising to see it right there with LHR-SIN which sees 6-7 daily on 388 and 77W and ahead of the likes of HKG-SYD or MAD-JFK which see 5 to 6 daily widebodies.

LF on ORY-PTP must be crazy

Lol, some people aren't happy that the US isn't topping every single Aviation related chart

upperdeckfan wrote:

What's the frequency of ORY-PTP? Although flown on very high density config, is surprising to see it right there with LHR-SIN which sees 6-7 daily on 388 and 77W and ahead of the likes of HKG-SYD or MAD-JFK which see 5 to 6 daily widebodies.

LF on ORY-PTP must be crazy

This summer
- Air Caraïbes : 10w 333 (354 seats) + daily 359 (389 seats) =6 263 seats each ways.
- Air France : 13w 77W (422 seats) = 5 488 seats each ways.
- Corsair : 7w 744 (533 seats) = 3 731 seats each ways.
- Level : 4w 332 (314 seats) = 1 1256 seats each ways.

So that’s 41 weekly flights and 16 736 seats each ways. LF’s are just below 100%.
And then you have XL running CDG-PTP

Thibault973 wrote:

upperdeckfan wrote:

What's the frequency of ORY-PTP? Although flown on very high density config, is surprising to see it right there with LHR-SIN which sees 6-7 daily on 388 and 77W and ahead of the likes of HKG-SYD or MAD-JFK which see 5 to 6 daily widebodies.

LF on ORY-PTP must be crazy

This summer
- Air Caraïbes : 10w 333 (354 seats) + daily 359 (389 seats) =6 263 seats each ways.
- Air France : 13w 77W (422 seats) = 5 488 seats each ways.
- Corsair : 7w 744 (533 seats) = 3 731 seats each ways.
- Level : 4w 332 (314 seats) = 1 1256 seats each ways.

So that’s 41 weekly flights and 16 736 seats each ways. LF’s are just below 100%.
And then you have XL running CDG-PTP

Assuming 41 weekly year long it doesn't get to 900K seats per year, still a long way to go to 1,3 million seats. To get there an average of 25K seats a week is needed, not a slight discrepancy.

Deleted

upperdeckfan wrote:

Thibault973 wrote:

upperdeckfan wrote:

What's the frequency of ORY-PTP? Although flown on very high density config, is surprising to see it right there with LHR-SIN which sees 6-7 daily on 388 and 77W and ahead of the likes of HKG-SYD or MAD-JFK which see 5 to 6 daily widebodies.

LF on ORY-PTP must be crazy

This summer
- Air Caraïbes : 10w 333 (354 seats) + daily 359 (389 seats) =6 263 seats each ways.
- Air France : 13w 77W (422 seats) = 5 488 seats each ways.
- Corsair : 7w 744 (533 seats) = 3 731 seats each ways.
- Level : 4w 332 (314 seats) = 1 1256 seats each ways.

So that’s 41 weekly flights and 16 736 seats each ways. LF’s are just below 100%.
And then you have XL running CDG-PTP

Assuming 41 weekly year long it doesn't get to 900K seats per year, still a long way to go to 1,3 million seats. To get there an average of 25K seats a week is needed, not a slight discrepancy.

You are counting only each way, double that and you get both ways as mentioned in the OP.

@OP good job running the numbers, but I'm not sure how many of us here would consider 5000km (2700nm, 6-7 hours) as long hauls. Is it possible to get the numbers for >8/9000km (~10 hours) routes ?

sabby wrote:

You are counting only each way, double that and you get both ways as mentioned in the OP.

Ups...my fault

Ellofiend wrote:

Lol, some people aren't happy that the US isn't topping every single Aviation related chart

When 4 out of 10 routes on the list involved an airport in US? I don't understand what else would make people happy .

BTW, using BTS number, the next intercontinental routes that involved US would be ORD-LHR, LAX-ICN, SFO-HKG, EWR-LHR, MIA-GRU, SFO-TPE, SFO-LHR, LAX-HKG, MIA-LHR; all with ~1M pax. Not surprisingly, more LHR on the list .