The Cape Town to Johannesburg route became the busiest air connection in Africa in 2025, transporting 3.4 million passengers. This figure significantly exceeded the number of passengers on the New York–Los Angeles route in the United States.
According to the International Air Transport Association (IATA) report 'Global Air Transport Statistics for 2025,' which analyzes differences in passenger flow between major domestic air routes worldwide, this superiority of the African direction was established.
The busiest route in South Africa connects two key economic and tourism centers of the country. Nevertheless, it remains smaller in scale than leading global domestic air routes, especially in Asia, where passenger flows are substantially higher.
Leaders of Global Air Transport
In 2025, the busiest airport connection globally was the Jeju–Seoul Gimpo line from South Korea, which accommodated 13.3 million passengers. All ten most popular airport pairs worldwide were domestic routes: nine of them were located in the Asia-Pacific region, and the remaining connection linked Jeddah and Riyadh in Saudi Arabia.
As noted in the report, 'The Asia-Pacific region dominated the ranking of the world's busiest airport pairs, with the route between Jeju International Airport and Seoul Gimpo International Airport (CJU-GMP) remaining the most popular globally, with 13.3 million passengers traveling between these two airports.'
In Latin America, the busiest route was between Bogota and Medellin in Colombia, serving 3.5 million passengers. The busiest connection in Europe was between Barcelona and Palma de Mallorca in Spain, recording 2.1 million passengers.
United States Remains the Largest Passenger Transport Market
The report also ranked countries based on the total number of passengers. The United States maintained its status as the world's largest passenger transport market, registering 890.1 million arriving and departing passengers in 2025. This represents a growth of 1.6% compared to the previous year.
However, despite its status, the US showed the slowest growth rate among the ten largest markets in the world, showing an increase of only 1.6% year-on-year compared to 2024. China took second place as the largest passenger transport market with 776.1 million passengers in 2025, an increase of 4.8% relative to 2024.
China ranked second with 776.1 million passengers, increasing by 4.8% compared to 2024. The UK ranked third with 269.7 million passengers, showing a growth of 3.4%, and Spain recorded 252.7 million passengers, corresponding to an increase of 5%.