In its latest weekly analysis of the global civil aviation market, aviation analysis firm OAG says that while the global scheduled flights average rose to 93,549 flights a day, India-UAE emerge as the fifth largest country pair in the world.

With over 2.1 million seats on scheduled commercial flights in the month of January, India-United Arab Emirates is now the fifth largest country pair in the world in terms of seat capacity, says the latest analysis by global aviation tracking and analyst firm, OAG.

In its weekly report, OAG says that Mexico-United States remained the top country pair with 4.66 million seats, followed by Canada-US at 3.08 million seats in the month gone by. Spain-United Kingdom, with 2.78 million seats and Japan-South Korea with 2.29 million seats are next in the list, says the analysis.

OAG says that as per its flight frequency counter, the number of one-way flights in the schedule from January 1 to February 4, stood at 3,274,225 flights, with the average number of commercial flights per day at 93,549.

It adds that with 170,623 flights, American Airlines had the most flights in January 2024. It was followed by Delta at 130498 flights, United with 124,412 flights in the month gone by. It adds that eight of the top 20 airlines in the world are in North America and with 70,527 flights, China Southern Airlines is the largest Asian carrier in the month.

It says that the USA remained the largest domestic market in the world this month, with just under 10 million more seats than China, with 1.6 pc growth over last January. China, by contrast, is growing rapidly with 7.7 pc rise in domestic capacity in the month, compared to January 2023.

OAG says that global capacity will reach 459.5 million seats this month, an increase of 8.5 pc on last month. It adds that almost every region of the world is growing this month compared to last month, with the exception of Central/Western Africa where capacity is down by 10.1 pc year on year.  This is largely due to the impact of ongoing instability in some countries in the region and some domestic capacity reductions in Nigeria.

Regions seeing most growth are North East Asia, up by 16 million seats on January 2023, equivalent to a 17.3 pc increase, Western Europe, where capacity is up 5 million seats, equivalent to a 6.8 pc increase, and there is strong growth across most of the rest of Africa where growth is into double digits compared to January 2023.