Rio – São Paulo still the busiest route in the Americas

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The one-hour flight between Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo is again the busiest airline route in the Americas, new research by Routesonline has found.

More than four million people travelled the 378 km between São Paulo Congonhas (CGH) and Rio de Janeiro’s Santos Dumont Airport (SDU) over the past 12 months, putting it comfortably at number one in the rankings.

With an average of 110 flights per day – or one every 13 minutes – the short hop connects São Paulo  with Rio de Janeiro. The route is served by GOL Linhas Aereas, LATAM Airlines Brasil and Avianca Brasil, with the three airlines having a 42 percent, 40 percent and 18 percent capacity share of the market respectively. The average base fare for the journey is $93.

Routesonline’s research used OAG’s Schedules Analyser to identify the top 200 routes in North and South America by capacity from 1 November 2016 to 31 October 2017. The routes were then ranked by passenger figures using data provided by Sabre Airline Solutions over the same time period.

The second busiest route in the Americas connects the capital of Mexico with the tourist hotspot of Cancún. Almost 3.7 million passengers travelled the 1,294 km between Mexico City Juarez (MEX) and Cancun (CUN), with the average cost of a ticket $72.

At number three in the rankings is Los Angeles International (LAX) – New York J F Kennedy (JFK). More than 2.8 million passengers travelled between the east and west coast cities. The average price of a ticket for the flight was $338, making it the most expensive in the top 20. Two other domestic routes completed the top five, with Mexico City Juarez (MEX) – Monterrey Mariano Escobedo (MTY) at number four and Lima (LIM) – Cuzco (CUZ) in fifth.

Another Brazilian domestic route, São Paulo Congonhas (CGH) – Brasilia (BSB), is at number 11 on the list, handling nearly 1.9 million passengers each year.

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