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Dublin to Heathrow was second busiest air route in Europe last year, new figures show

Figures from data consultancy OAG show that the route had 2.35m seats last year, placing it behind Rome Fiumicinoto Madrid

Dublin to London Heathrow was the second busiest international air route within Europe last year, with some 2.35 million seats. Photograph: Paul Faith/AFP
Dublin to London Heathrow was the second busiest international air route within Europe last year, with some 2.35 million seats. Photograph: Paul Faith/AFP
Thu Jan 02 2025 - 15:06

Dublin to London Heathrow was the second busiest international air route operated within Europe last year, according to figures compiled by aviation data consultancy OAG. The route had some 2.35 million seats last year, placing it behind Rome Fiumicino to Madrid, with 2.41 million seats.

Flights between the two airports were operated by Aer Lingus and British Airways last year, although there was disruption to schedules due to strikes by Aer Lingus pilots last summer.

The busiest domestic route in Europe was Barcelona to Palma with just under 2.9 million seats while the busiest route from Europe to a destination outside the region was Heathrow to New York with just more than 4 million seats (ranking it tenth in the overall global ranking).

The busiest international airline route in 2024 was Hong Kong to Taipei in Taiwan, with 6.8 million seats, OAG said. Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia to Singapore Changi had topped the ranking in 2023 but slipped to fourth place last year with just under 5.4 million seats.

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The busiest air routes are defined as those with the largest volume of scheduled airline seats during the year. Data is for flights in both directions on each route.

Separately, Ryanair ranked ninth in Europe in terms of cancelled flights, new figures show. The Irish airline cancelled 2,932 flights last year, according to aviation analytics group Cirium. This was out of a total of more than 1 million flights.

Topping the ranking was German carrier Lufthansa, with 12,220 cancellations from 419,682 flights, followed by British Airways with 7,117 cancellations from a schedule comprising 310,631 flights.

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