August 2 was the busiest day in the world's skies, November 18 the one with the fewest takeoffs. Here is the OAG data
Good end and good beginning, as they say. The year 2024, a beautiful and eventful year, is heading toward [...]
PVG
Have a good ending and a good beginning, as they say. The year 2024, a beautiful and eventful year, is drawing to a close. But how did the last 12 months go in the aviation sector? Providing an answer - in fact, more than one, given the amount of data - is OAG, Leading platform in travel industry data analysis.
In this article:
The busiest day in 2024
With a capacity of nearly 20 million seats- 19,278,320, to be precise- Friday, August 2, was the busiest day, with the largest number of seats available in all of 2024: there was an increase of 692,000 seats over 2023, when the total number stopped at just over 16 million.
The least busy day in 2024
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On the contrary, the least 'busy' day in the past 12 months was Thursday, Nov. 18, Thanksgiving Day in the U.S.: on that date, total seats made available by airlines were 14,871,278.
The airport that added the most routes.
It is the stopover Václav Havel of Prague (PRG) the one that, in the past 12 months, has added the most routes: 43, in total, including new flights to and from Nantes, Naples, Nice, and Liverpool (with easyJet) and to Abu Dhabi (with Ethiad). PRG's airport grew from 133 total routes in 2023 to an impressive 176.
The airport that has recovered best after the pandemic
The pandemic, as we have chronicled over the years, has caused a setback to the travel industry. The airport that recovered best was the one in Bogota: Thanks to increased connectivity, expansion plans for 2025, and also growing travel demand from Colombians, the capacity of Bogota's El Dorado International Airport is increased by 38% over the past five years (20,966,519 places in 2019 versus 28,979,057 in 2024).
The airport that has grown the most in terms of seat capacity
With an increase of nearly 10 million seats made available, it is the airport of Shanghai Pudong (PVG) the one that has experienced the fastest growth. Accomplice to a series of airport expansion projects and, most importantly, China's less stringent visa requirements, PVG increased from 37,677,145 seats in 2023 to 47,588,332 in 2024.
Routes with more than 100 flights per day in 2024
According to OAG data, there were. 10 routes that had an average frequency of 100 flights per day during 2024 (about 4 or more connections every hour).
Flights between Jeju (CJU) and Seoul (GMP) were, on average, 199 per day. By contrast, there were 138 daily connections between Melbourne (MEL) and Sydney (SYD), and 117 flights between Jeddah (JED) and Riyadh (RUH). This is followed by the Hanoi HAN-Ho Chi Minh City SGN routes (with an average of 114 flights per day), Fukuoka FUK-Tokyo HND (with 112 connections), Mumbai BOM-Delhi DEL (108), Sapporo CTS-Tokyo HND (108), Sao Paulo CGH-Rio de Janeiro SDU (103), Bogota BOG-Medellin MDE (101), and Jakarta CGK-Makassar UPG (100).
Fastest growing airline
The number of flights in 2023 was 23,940, while in 2024 they grew by almost twice as much (+46%) to 35,015: this is HK Express the carrier that has grown most abruptly over the past 12 months. HK Express is a low-cost airline owned by Cathay Pacific that connects 24 destinations in Cambodia, China, Japan, South Korea, Northern Mariana Islands, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam.
