Sunday, July 7, 2024
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As the U.S. experiences its most active summer for air travel, certain city connections will offer millions of seats to travelers. This summer, airlines have arranged for over 720 million seats on flights within and outside of the U.S., with domestic flights comprising more than 85% of these seats. So, what are the most heavily booked city pairs this summer?
Top US domestic air travel routes for this summer
Data from the analytics company OAG reveals that New York is involved in six of the top ten busiest domestic routes in the U.S. this summer. The only routes in the top ten that don’t include New York are Dallas/Fort Worth to Los Angeles and Las Vegas to Los Angeles, ranked seventh and eighth, respectively.
For this summer season, airlines have planned a total of 721,651,961 seats, of which 623,853,291 are designated for domestic services and 97,798,670 for international routes. Here are the ten domestic routes in the U.S. with the highest number of seats available:
| Rank | City Pair | Airline Capacity (Seats) |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Chicago-New York | 4,011,020 |
| 2 | Atlanta-New York | 3,577,556 |
| 3 | Los Angeles-New York | 3,335,658 |
| 4 | New York-Orlando | 3,115,331 |
| 5 | Miami-New York | 2,936,371 |
| 6 | Fort Lauderdale-New York | 2,661,581 |
| 7 | Dallas Fort Worth-Los Angeles | 2,566,731 |
| 8 | Las Vegas-Los Angeles | 2,499,520 |
| 9 | Dallas Fort Worth-New York | 2,459,250 |
| 10 | Charlotte-New York | 2,363,696 |
Record-Breaking Summer in the Skies
This summer is setting records for U.S. airlines, with passenger numbers expected to rise by over 6% compared to last year. Airlines for America (A4A) estimates that approximately 271 million travelers will fly with U.S. carriers from June 1 to August 31.
The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) anticipates this trend to continue, expecting a historic Fourth of July travel period after setting a new daily record for passengers screened last month. Despite some initial concerns in late May about the industry’s preparedness for the anticipated travel boom, U.S. airlines are managing the increased demand successfully.
Global Hotspots
New York remains a key player on the international scene, appearing in six of the ten busiest international routes from the U.S. The London-New York route is the busiest, with nearly 1.8 million seats available, significantly more than the next busiest route, Paris-New York, which has 961,000 seats.
| Rank | City Pair | Airline Capacity (Seats) |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | New York-London | 1,794,067 |
| 2 | Paris-New York | 961,416 |
| 3 | New York-Toronto | 880,171 |
| 4 | Los Angeles-London | 733,605 |
| 5 | Orlando-San Juan | 674,745 |
| 6 | Honolulu-Tokyo | 637,512 |
| 7 | New York-San Juan | 638,000 |
| 8 | Los Angeles-Tokyo | 607,000 |
| 9 | New York-Rome | 596,724 |
| 10 | New York-Santiago | 523,706 |
Flight capacity between North America and Western Europe is set to reach unprecedented levels this year, with close to 140,000 flights on the schedule. This represents a 6% increase compared to last year and is 8.5% more than the figures from 2019. In total, there are 445 distinct airport pairs connecting these two regions.
