London – New York is top route

With almost 3m passengers a year, the 3,400-mile (5,500km) trip between Heathrow and New York JFK has taken the crown as Europe’s busiest international scheduled service, research by Routesonline has found.

A total of 2,919,864 passengers boarded flights between the two destinations in 2018, according to the latest data from Sabre Market Intelligence, a rise of 1.8% compared with the previous 12 months.

Four airlines served the market last year, led by British Airways which the figures show had a 40.7% share of available seats on offer. Virgin Atlantic had 28.5%, American Airlines 20.6% and Delta Air Lines 10.2%.

The ascent of the LHR – JFK route followed a 16.6% year-on-year drop in the number of passengers flying between Heathrow and Dubai International. The Sabre figures show 2.7m passengers flew the route non-stop in 2018, down from 3.2m a year earlier.

Five airlines served the market although two – Qantas and Royal Brunei – ended service during the year. Qantas left after opting to reroute its Sydney – Heathrow flight via Singapore and Royal Brunei opened direct flights.

The remaining eight of the top 10 routes for 2018 were Heathrow – Dublin (1.8m passengers), Istanbul Atatürk (IST) – Tehran (1.74m), Heathrow – Amsterdam (1.72m), Heathrow – Los Angeles (1.6m), Heathrow – Singapore (1.56m), Heathrow – Hong Kong (1.55m), Paris – JFK (1.55m) and Heathrow – Frankfurt (1.54m).

www.routesonline.com

www.sabre.com/insights/tag/market-intelligence

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David Hurst, West Sussex

It was interesting to see the impressive passenger figures on the top ten routes. It would be interesting to see the aircraft movements figures for the same routes.