Premium air travel grows

International premium-class air travel continued to grow in 2025, while Asia Pacific retained its dominance of the world's busiest airport routes, according to the latest World Air Transport Statistics (WATS) released by the International Air Transport Association (IATA).

The annual report, which compiles data from 1 315 airlines worldwide, provides a comprehensive overview of passenger demand, airline operations, fleet trends and financial performance through to 2025.

IATA said international business and first-class travel reached 109.7 million passengers in 2025, an increase of 4.5% from the previous year. Premium passengers accounted for 5.5% of all international travellers.

Latin America recorded the fastest growth in premium travel, with passenger numbers rising 22.1% to four million. Europe remained the largest premium travel market with 39.7 million passengers, while North America and the Middle East recorded the highest proportions of premium travellers relative to their total passenger numbers, at 10.4% and 9.5% respectively.

The Asia Pacific region continued to dominate the world's busiest airport pairs. The domestic route between Jeju International Airport and Seoul's Gimpo International Airport in South Korea remained the busiest globally, carrying 13.3 million passengers during the year.

The only route outside Asia Pacific to feature in the world's top 10 busiest airport pairs was the domestic connection between Jeddah and Riyadh in Saudi Arabia.

In Africa, the busiest airport pair remained Cape Town International Airport and Johannesburg's OR Tambo International Airport, serving 3.4 million passengers during 2025.

The United States remained the world's largest passenger market, recording 890.1 million arriving and departing passengers, although growth slowed to 1.6% compared with 2024. China ranked second with 776.1 million passengers, representing annual growth of 4.8%.

Among the fastest-growing aviation markets were Kazakhstan, where passenger numbers rose 40% to 18.1 million, Uzbekistan, which recorded growth of 16.9% to 12.5 million passengers, and Vietnam, where traffic increased 14.8% to 80.9 million.

The report also highlighted the aviation industry's continued shift towards newer, more fuel-efficient aircraft. Compared with 2019, flights operated by the Boeing 787 increased by 40.8%, while Airbus A350 operations more than doubled, rising 117.4%.

In contrast, Airbus A380 flights remained well below pre-pandemic levels, declining 24.4% over the same period.

The Boeing 737 remained the world's most frequently used aircraft family in 2025, operating 10.8 million flights, followed by the Airbus A320 with 8.7 million flights and the Airbus A321 with 4.2 million.