Aviation’s continued growth in Asia Pacific was highlighted by the latest World Air Transport Statistics (WATS) from global industry body IATA.

WATS covers airline data from 240 carriers covering passenger demand, air cargo, airline performance and other key metrics, and is updated annually.

This year’s report reveals that airports in the APAC area are dominating the league table of the world’s busiest for airport pairs with Jeju-Soeul at the top followed with 13.2 million passengers.

This is followed by Sapporo-Tokyo Haneda (9.2mn), Fukuoka-Tokyo Haneda (9.2mn), Hanoi-Ho Chi Minh (8mn), and Melbourne Tullamarine-Sydney (7.2mn). The top 10 featured only one airport pair outside of APAC: Jeddah-Riyadh (6.3mn).

Bogota-Medellin was the busiest route in Latin America with 3.8 million passengers while Cape Town-Johannesburg was Africa’s busiest route, with 3.3 million passengers.

New York John F. Kennedy International Airport-Los Angeles was the busiest route in North America with 2.2 million passengers while Barcelona-Palma de Mallorca was the busiest within Europe with 2 million passengers.

Another key finding in the 2025 report was that international premium class travel grew by 11.8%, outpacing growth in global economy travel of 11.5%. The total number of international premium-class travellers in 2024 was 116.9 million (6% of total international passengers).

Leading the regions in terms of percentage growth was APAC with a year-on-year growth of 22.8% with 21 million premium passengers, although it was outpaced in growth by economy class passenger numbers, up 28.6% to 500.8 million.

Growth in premium travel exceeded economy class travel in Europe, Latin America, Middle East and North America. Europe remained the largest market for international premium travel, with 39.3 million premium passengers while premium travellers as a percentage of all travellers were highest in the Middle East at 14.7%.

Narrowbody were among the most used aircraft in 2024. Boeing 737 flew 10 million flights with 2.4 trillion Available Seat Kilometres (ASKs) in 2024. Airbus A320s flew 7.9 million flights and 1.7 trillion ASKs and A321s conducted 3.4 million flights and 1.1 trillion ASKs

According to the IARA data, the US remains the world’s biggest aviation market with 876 million passengers in 2024 on the strength of its domestic market growing 5.2% year-on-year. China was the second-biggest passenger market, with 741 million passengers, a growth of 18.7% compared to 2023.