Dublin to London the world’s second busiest international air route

The world’s second busiest international air route is right on our doorstep, according to figures released yesterday by the International Air Transport Association (IATA).

A total of 3.6 million passengers travelled the route between Dublin and London last year; a 6.9% rise on the 2012 figure.

Traffic on the route grew by almost 7% last year, making it the second most popular inter-city international route, ahead of Jakarta to Singapore and behind the Hong Kong to Chinese Tapei route which remained the world’s most travelled despite an 11.5% decrease.

A spokesperson for Dublin Airport said that the results of the report did not come as a surprise as the route has been “consistently up there in terms of one of the busiest in Europe and the world”.

Other IATA statistics showed that 3.13 billion passengers were carried in total in 2013 which represents a significant rise of 5.1% on the previous year.

Asia-Pacific, which also saw strong growth in the year, was the busiest region accounting for more than a billion passengers, while Europe was the second busiest region with more than 825m people being carried by airlines last year.

Within Europe, the UK was the biggest market for air travel with almost 178m passengers flying to and from, and within the region.

The price of air travel also fell in real terms by more than 7% last year.

IATA director general, Tony Tyler also outlined aviation’s importance to international trade, highlighting that more than a third of internationally traded goods are delivered by air, 58m jobs are supported by aviation worldwide and the sector accounts for almost 3.5% of global GDP.