The Barcelona-Palma flight route was the busiest in Europe in 2024.
Spain ranked fourth in terms of passengers, behind only the US, China and the UK.
BarcelonaThe tourism sector broke records in 2024 and is on track to repeat them this year, although the figures are growing. with less force in these first six monthsWith El Prat airport exceeding its theoretical capacity limit, with more than 55 million passengers, one of its routes has become the busiest in all of Europe. The short-haul flight between Barcelona and Palma de Mallorca received the highest number of travelers in 2024, according to data collected from 240 airlines by the International Air Transport Association (IATA).
The route connecting the airports of Barcelona and Palma de Mallorca carried a total of two million passengers last year. Vueling is currently the airline that offers the most flights between the two cities, followed by Ryanair and Air Europa.
Globally, the route between the Korean cities of Jeju and Seoul became the busiest last year, with 13.2 million passengers. In fact, the Asia-Pacific region dominated the ranking of the routes with the most travelers, with nine of the ten most popular connections, with the exception of the one between Jidda and Riyadh (in Saudi Arabia).
In other geographic regions, in North America the route between New York JFK and Los Angeles carried the most travelers, with 2.2 million passengers; and the connection between Bogotá and Medellín in Colombia led the Latin American flights, with 3.8 million. The route between Cape Town and Johannesburg carried the highest number of passengers in Africa, with 3.3 million passengers.
Spain, the fourth country in the world with the most passengers
The United States remained the largest market in the aviation sector, bolstered by figures for its domestic routes. In 2024, it carried 876 million passengers, 5.2% more than the previous year. In this sense, the models of the American manufacturer Boeing were the ones that performed the most flights, with 10 million, ahead of the 7.9 million of the European company Airbus.
In second place, close behind the United States, was China, with 741 million passengers, an 18.7% increase. Further behind, in third and fourth place, were the United Kingdom, with 261 million passengers (+7.3%) and Spain, with 241 million (+10.7%). Both European countries surpassed the figures of India, with 211 million (+11.1%), and Japan, with 205 million (+18.6%).