Where does flying concentrate?

Every chart on this question

• US Local GDP is identified only at medium-hub and non-hub airports

  Passenger demand shows a measurable link to the local economy at medium-hub and non-hub airports only. At large and small hubs the estimate is too imprecise to say anything.

• AU Australia: top 10 domestic routes by passengers, 1995 to 2025

  Melbourne–Sydney is Australia's dominant domestic route, carrying well over half again as many passengers as any other city pair.

• BR Brazil: top 10 domestic routes by passenger volume

  The first bar, SBRJ-SBSP, is the Rio–São Paulo shuttle. It is Brazil's busiest domestic route by a wide margin, carrying more than twice the next route's passengers.

• CA Canada: airport movements concentration stays low (HHI 0.0540 in 1997, 0.0550 in 2019 on a fixed set of airports)

  Flight activity is spread thinly across Canadian airports, and its concentration barely moved from the late nineties to the eve of COVID; the small rise that shows comes mostly from airports dropping out of the table.

• CN China: average air stage length (km/trip)

  The average Chinese air trip has lengthened over the past decade, apart from a dip during COVID, and ends the series at its longest.

• CN China's top three airports handle 22% of passenger throughput, down from 27% in 2015

  The share of China's three busiest airports was already falling before the pandemic. It dropped much further in the pandemic years and has since returned to just below its pre-COVID level.

• CN China: airport passenger throughput by region

  Eastern China's airports handle roughly half of national passenger throughput, and every region has recovered well past its zero-COVID-era low.

• IN India: top international routes (2025)

  India's busiest international routes run through the Gulf, and Dubai is one end of four of the top ten city pairs.

• IN India: domestic route persistence (2016–2025)

  India's network has a stable core of long-running routes surrounded by a volatile fringe of short-lived regional connections.

• US International gateway market share

  JFK's share of US international traffic has fallen by roughly a quarter from its early-nineties average. It remains the largest gateway, ahead of LAX and Miami, whose shares have also slipped.

• US Gateway airport regional specialisation (2024)

  Miami's international traffic is mostly Latin American, the transatlantic is the largest region at both New York airports, and LAX is the most evenly spread.

• US Top 15 US international gateways (2024)

  JFK handles the most international passengers of any US airport, ahead of LAX and Miami.

• US Network concentration: top airports & hub routes

  The traffic shares of the ten and the twenty busiest airports have barely moved in three decades, and the share of routes touching a large hub ends about where it began, with no trend the data can confirm.

• US Fewer than three in ten US routes stay active 21 or more years; nearly one in five appears only once

  Route lifespans cluster at the two extremes. The largest group was active in more than twenty years and the next largest in a single year, counting years whether or not they run in a row.

• US US domestic route network size

  Fewer airport pairs have scheduled service than in the early nineties, even though smaller carriers were added to the data in the early two-thousands. Part of the step up at that point is the wider coverage.

• US Pareto curve: cumulative traffic share

  In every snapshot year across three decades, the busiest tenth of routes carries most US traffic. That tenth's share was almost unchanged until the mid twenty-tens and has eased since, so the latest curves sit lower.

• US Passenger share by route type

  Hub-based routes carry the large majority of US passengers. Their share rose through the two-thousands to a peak in the mid twenty-tens, as point-to-point routes lost ground, and has been flat to slightly lower since.

• US Top 10 markets in 2024 historical trajectory

  Growth among today's busiest US routes is uneven over three and a half decades, led by Denver-Phoenix, which more than tripled, while a couple now carry less traffic than at the start.

• UK One airport handles 28% of UK passengers; the top four handle 63%

  Heathrow alone handles more UK passengers than Gatwick and Manchester combined, and the London airports together handle most UK passengers.