This Was the Most Popular U.S. Flight Route of 2023
A Hawaiian route was followed by a southeastern one.
Douglas Peebles/Getty Images
Every single day, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) handles an average of 45,000 flights, totaling more than 16.4 million flights a year. And the most popular domestic route in the U.S. is a short-haul flight from Honolulu to Maui’s Kahului, according to the Busiest Flight Routes report, released by aviation analytics company OAG.
The Hawaiian island-hopping flight — serviced by Hawaiian Air and Southwest and typically lasts about 45 minutes or less — had 3,612,212 seats making it the country’s busiest domestic route. The route moved up from its third-place spot last year and didn’t crack the top 10 in the last pre-pandemic year of 2019.
Not far behind with 3,515,882 seats was another relatively short flight, Atlanta to Orlando, which is about 90 minutes, followed by Las Vegas to Los Angeles, about an 80-minute flight, with 3,496,170 seats.
The first multi-hour flight on the list was from New York City’s John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK) to Los Angeles with 3,241,663 seats, coming in fourth place. It was also the only cross-country route on the list.
The rest of the top 10 was rounded out by Denver to Las Vegas (3,198,098), L.A. to San Francisco (3,130,328), Atlanta to Fort Lauderdale (3,045,220), Denver to Phoenix (3,040,961), Atlanta to New York City’s LaGuardia Airport (2,707,958), and L.A. to Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport (2,672,269).
Panning out to international flights, only one route that touched the U.S. landed in the top 10 busiest global flight routes: JFK to London's Heathrow Airport (LHR), with 3,878,590 seats, making it the eight most popular in 2023. The top spot went to the Kuala Lumpur-to-Singapore route with 4,891,952 seats, followed by Cairo to Jeddah with 4,795,712 seats, and Hong Kong to Taipei with 4,568,280.
For the study, OAG looked at routes with the largest volume of scheduled airline seats in the 2023 calendar year, based on both directions of the route. OAG’s complete report of the busiest routes of 2023 can be accessed at oag.com.
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