IATA reports strong growth in global air transport statistics for 2024

The WATS report also ranks the busiest airport pairs globally for 2024. Asia Pacific led this category; Jeju-Seoul (CJU-GMP) was identified as the most traveled route with 13.2 million passengers last year. Nine out of ten top airport pairs were located within Asia Pacific, with Jeddah-Riyadh (JED-RUH) being the only exception outside that region.

In other regions, Bogota-Medellin (BOG-MDE) was Latin America's busiest route with 3.8 million passengers; Cape Town-Johannesburg (CPT-JNB) led Africa with 3.3 million; New York John F. Kennedy-Los Angeles (JFK-LAX) topped North America at 2.2 million; and Barcelona-Palma de Mallorca (BCN-PMI) was Europe's busiest intra-regional route at two million passengers.

Regarding aircraft utilization, narrowbody models from Boeing and Airbus dominated global operations last year. The Boeing 737 family flew ten million flights and generated over two trillion available seat kilometers (ASKs). This was followed by Airbus A320 models with nearly eight million flights and Airbus A321s with over three million flights.

Looking at passenger markets by country for 2024, the United States maintained its position as the world’s largest aviation market with a total of 876 million passengers—a figure bolstered mainly by domestic travel and reflecting a year-on-year growth rate of just over five percent. China ranked second with more than 740 million passengers—an increase of nearly nineteen percent compared to the previous year—while other leading countries included the United Kingdom, Spain, India, and Japan.

For further details about these findings or to access more information about IATA’s WATS report, visit their official website.