Top 10 Revenue Routes
Have you ever looked at the departures board at an airport and wondered what route out of the hundreds served makes the most money for an airline?
Now, we need to wonder no more as OAG has done the researched and crunched the numbers and have produced a list of the top ten most money making air routes in the world.
Globally one route breaks the billion-dollar threshold and for the airline, it amounts to about 6 percent of its total annual revenue, it is the London Heathrow New York JFK route for British Airways. According to the OAG calculations, the route makes £18,563 / US$24,639 an hour for BA.
Here is the top ten list and some you might find a little surprising, although perhaps learning that Emirates earn more money per hour on its Heathrow - Dubai route than any other airline on any other route may not be a shocker!
Incredibly, five of the top ten revenue earners are either to or from London Heathrow which may explain the ongoing debate about the third runway with the increased competition damaging those lucrative earners.
And in the same vein perhaps the OneWorld Alliance needs to find a sub-brand for its Heathrow services since three of the world’s top ten revenue generators share Heathrow in common.
All of the Top 10 routes are also high-cost operations, combining generally wide-bodied services with high frequency, in the case of MEL – SYD with Qantas operating around 65 flights a day on just that one route. Typically, these routes also include a high proportion of business traffic, later booking and higher yielding in nature. Whilst the cost of operating may be high, at least the revenues are likely to be even higher!
