What are the 25 busiest passenger air routes in Europe?

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Recently, I’ve posted a map of the 100 busiest airports in Europe. Today, we’re going to look at the busiest air routes in Europe. This map shows the 25 busiest air routes in 2022. Some of them, might come as a surprise to you.

Of the 5 busiest air routes in Europe, 3 of them are to a destination outside of Europe. The busiest air route, is London Heathrow to New York JFK (2,373,529 passengers). The no. 2 is also departing from London Heathrow and goes to Dubai (2,260,330 passengers). No. 3 is the highest ranked domestic flight, from Istanbul Sabiha Gökçen to Antalya (2,066,301 passengers). No. 4 is also a domestic flight, from Barcelona to Palma de Mallorca (2,033,205 passengers). No. 5 might be a little bit surprising, Istanbul to Tehran (2,003,315 passengers). The air routes in the top 5 are also the only ones in Europe to carry more than 2 million passengers in 2022.

What also stands out, is the number of domestic flights. France, Norway, Spain and Turkey have multiple domestic flights in Europe’s top 25. Norway might be a surprise to many considering the small population size. But keep in mind that Norway’s terrain is very mountainous. So moving around by road or rail can be very time consuming.

The number of passengers per air route includes passenger numbers for both directions. There is data on flights departing and arriving every European country, except Belarus, Russia and Ukraine. For these three countries, there is only data for flights to and from European countries with data (in green). So, no data on domestic flights in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine, no data on flights between Belarus, Russia and Ukraine and no data on flights from Belarus, Russia and Ukraine to non-European countries.