America’s Busiest Air Route

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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America’s Busiest Air Route

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Around this time last year, travel restrictions and quarantine mandates began to pop up in states across the U.S. in response to the threat from the novel coronavirus. Many people chose not to travel by air, both to decrease their risk of contracting the virus and in an effort to help reduce its spread across the nation.

The number of commercial flights in the U.S. decreased nearly 50% from 2019 to 2020, and flights in general were booked at less capacity than usual, not only because fewer people were flying but also because many airlines limited passenger numbers to allow for social distancing onboard. The number of passengers screened at TSA checkpoints remained below 200,000 every day during April of 2020, as compared to over 2 million daily for most of April 2019.

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Despite restrictions, air travel within the United States has continued, and this spring airlines are seeing an increase in flight interest and bookings. While business travel has not recovered, people are still travelling for leisure, with national parks and Florida beaches among top travel destinations. (These are the latest travel restrictions in each state.)

Using data from the air travel intelligence agency OAG, 24/7 Tempo has picked the busiest domestic flight route in the United States during February of 2021. This is defined as the one recording the largest number of scheduled seats. Data is for either direction on each route. Additionally, the top four busiest flight routes are between Atlanta, Georgia, and destinations in Florida including Miami and Orlando.

Atlanta, Georgia to Fort Lauderdale, Florida is America’s busiest air route based on our analysis.
> Origin airport: Atlanta (ATL)
> Destination airport: Fort Lauderdale (FLL)
> Total Seats (February 2021): 215,248

Click here to read America’s busiest air routes now.

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Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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