These are the world’s busiest airline routes during Covid times

The coronavirus pandemic has hit the aviation industry like no crisis before, grounding thousands of planes and drying up travel as restrictions on movement deter people from flying. International flights have felt the impact most acutely due to border controls and mandatory quarantine requirements; domestic routes are starting to recover as people are generally able to move more freely within their countries. Asia is a standout, home to all 10 of the world’s busiest domestic routes this month, according to OAG Aviation Worldwide. South Korea has the busiest by far, between its capital Seoul and the island Jeju. The route -- which takes a little over an hour -- has around 1.3m seats scheduled in November, OAG said. That’s more than the top 10 international routes combined. Jeju-Seoul was the world’s busiest domestic route last year, pre-pandemic, with over 17m seats, or about 48,000 on average a day. Of the other top 10 busiest domestic routes, China and Japan have four each and one is in Vietnam. China’s busiest is from capital Beijing to Shanghai’s Hongqiao Airport, with 768,184 seats this month, about the same as the top four US routes combined. Separately, aviation analytics company Cirium said this week that 31% of the world’s passenger jet fleet was in storage as of Nov. 11, or a little over 8,100 aircraft. <br/>