Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me, Simon Calder.

Coming to you today from a very wet and windy railway platform at Marlow in Buckinghamshire.

Great Western Railways or Network Rail, not quite sure who is responsible for this,

but anyway, I'm not where I need to be and so therefore I'm just

hoping to talk to you now while I can and what I'm going to talk to you has nothing to do with

them the inadequacies of Britain's railways but it has everything to do with the

top airline routes around the world because

OAG the schedule analysts have calculated once again the world's 10 busiest international air

routes and well the shape of the top 10 compared with pre-COVID times is extraordinary.

Almost all of the routes that did exist in 2019 in the top 10 have disappeared.

The one which hasn't is Kuala Lumpur to Singapore.

But everything else, I'm just looking down the table.

Hong Kong, Taipei, Jakarta, Singapore, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur and many more have just disappeared.

And they've done that, of course, because over the past year, East Asia has been very closed to travel. And other parts of the world have been opening up

and it's the top of the table now which is remarkable because the top two have one end

in Saudi Arabia the top route is Cairo to Jeddah on the Red Sea coast of Saudi Arabia.

And in second place, Dubai to Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia.

It's very surprising to see this, but Saudi Arabia very keen on increasing its tourism and its aviation.

Of course, there will be very serious concerns that a lot of people will have about the human rights record in that country.

But having said that, there was clearly a lot of demand for travel within the area so yeah

kairajajed at first place Dubai to reage second place the only two international air routes which

handled more than three million passengers over the past 12 months third and fourth places are interesting because they both are routes starting from London Heath Row.

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