It’s one of two Middle Eastern routes that made the world’s top 10…

The Official Airline Guide (OAG) has released its analysis of the top 10 busiest international flight routes from across the world and it has some entries that might surprise a few.

It’s a list compiled from OAG’s Global Airline Schedules Data and ranks routes based on the number of seats sold for each one annually.

In 2024 Dubai to Riyadh comes in at number six globally, with a total of 4.4 million seats. To give you some perspective, the current busiest route (and therefore holding the top spot for 2024) is also an inter-regional service, Hong Kong to Tapei which sees about 6.7 million passengers flying annually.

This Dubai to Riyadh link-up holds its number six position from the 2023 list, but represents a massive escalation (37 per cent) of traffic when compared to pre-Covid 2019 levels when the same pairing sat at 19th globally.

Airlines operating the direct Dubai to Riyadh service include Emirates, Saudia Airlines, flynas, flydubai and flyadeal.

Riyadh is also part of one other pairing that’s made the top 10, Cairo to Jeddah which is actually the second busiest route globally, seeing carriage of more than 5.4 million passengers in 2024.

And in terms of domestic routes, Saudi is a prominent player again. Its Jeddah to Riyadh service has racked up 8.7 million seats sold in 2024, making it the 6th busiest domestic route globally. There aren’t any scheduled domestic flights in the UAE, because driving from Abu Dhabi to Ras Al Khaimah only takes about two and a half hours.

Asia dominates the international route map traffic with seven of the top 10 busiest global routes. The table looks like this:

With Saudi Arabia’s growing tourism trade, and a thirst for exponential growth in both the UAE and KSA, we can expect these trends to continue.

Images: What’s On archive