North America’s busiest domestic route flies out of Toronto Pearson Airport in Mississauga

With nearly 3.5 million booked seats on flights between Toronto Pearson Airport in Mississauga and Vancouver International Airport in 2024, that air travel route was the busiest domestic route in all of North America this past year, a new aviation study shows.

The Pearson Airport-Vancouver flight route recorded 3,498,835 seats booked in the past year, roughly 24,000 more than the route linking Atlanta and Orlando in the U.S. (3,474,713 seats), which finished second in the Top 10 North America Domestic Routes rankings as compiled by OAG Aviation Worldwide Limited.

OAG, a leading provider of aviation data and analytics, each year tracks the busiest domestic and international routes around the world, also breaking the numbers down by continent.

Honolulu-Kahului was the third-busiest North American domestic route, with 3,369,790 seats booked in 2024, the data shows.

The only other Canadian route in the top 10 was Vancouver-Calgary, which placed 10th (2,960,192 seats).

Here’s OAG’s list of the top 10 domestic routes in North America for 2024:

• Vancouver – Toronto 3,498,835 seats
• Atlanta – Orlando 3,474,713 seats
• Honolulu – Kahului 3,369,790 seats
• Las Vegas – Los Angeles 3,354,849 seats
• Denver – Phoenix 3,214,473 seats
• Los Angeles – San Francisco 3,158,918 seats
• New York JFK – Los Angeles 3,158,654 seats
• New York La Guardia – Chicago O’Hare
  3,118,179 seats
• Atlanta – Fort Lauderdale 2,998,172 seats
• Vancouver – Calgary 2,960,192 seats

Air travellers have long created a large demand for flights between Pearson Airport and Vancouver.

Airport officials in Toronto said earlier this year that with around 320,000 travellers scheduled to catch flights to the west coast city from Pearson in July and August, Vancouver was the single-most popular destination — domestic and international — out of Canada’s busiest airport during the summer.

Those numbers did not include travellers booked on flights out of Vancouver International Airport to Pearson.

(Cover photo: U.S. Federal Aviation Administration)