There's often talk about what markets are underserved usually when people are looking to see what prospective routes could be started by airlines. However, my question is what is the most overserved route currently flown by airlines i.e. what route-pair or city-pair has significantly more capacity relative to the O&D demand between the two markets/airports? It could be that a single airline or multiple airlines has hubs on either end e.g. Dallas-Atlanta where AA has a hub at Dallas and has to serve local plus connection demand to Atlanta, DL has to do the same to Dallas and WN has hubs at both ends and has to do the same in both directions. It could be a popular tourist destination or a prestige route that airlines feel compelled to serve for local frequent fliers despite significant competition. Whatever the case, what's the route pair or city pair where the capacity/local demand ratio is the highest?

LHR-JFK has a lot of capacity in the winter as airlines fly to keep their slots.

Brickell305 wrote:

Whatever the case, what's the route pair or city pair where the capacity/local demand ratio is the highest?

Why is that a reasonable definition of over-served? Your example DFW-ATL is hubs doing what they're supposed to do. It doesn't demonstrate excess capacity on the O&D airport pair, not in any way.

I would suggest looking at distance-adjusted average fares per mile being a better metric. For the U.S. there's plenty of data on airport pairs.

Your example of prestige I would refer to as more a strategic decision, there doing it to maintain a market where as prestige is more about serving a market for the glory of it, say like New York city. I actually doubt that there are many route served for prestige reasons only. Serving a market for the sake of serving it just doesn't happen in spite of what anet thinks. Markets are served because they are profitable, they are a connection to a profitable market, it works for aircraft utilization/maintenance reasons. & so on.

Within Europe I imagine AMS-Paris is overserved. The route had 1.2 million PAX in 2017 and it is a monopoly of AFKL. It has to compete with the train. So even easyJet (despite being strong in both AMS and Paris) does not bother with it.

Globally a lot of ME3 routes are clearly overserved, specially QR and Doha. How many local PAX are on a Doha-Krabi flight?

In the U.S., SAN-LAX is flown by all three majors airlines, almost always for connections. Other than my one experience to be the last passenger to fly out of the Commuter Terminal at SAN on American Eagle (taking the train back the next day), there is virtually zero O&D traffic.

A similar route to LAX-SAN would be ORD-MKE - definitely connection only as most true O&D traffic just drive (or ride Amtrak) between the two cities.

SCQ83 wrote:

Globally a lot of ME3 routes are clearly overserved, specially QR and Doha. How many local PAX are on a Doha-Krabi flight?

While many ME3 routes (QR and EY especially) falls under the "overserved" territory, I just don't see how a single daily flight like DOH-KBV rank up high compare to many routes. Right now it's on a QR 788, which seats 254. For comparison, ORD-MKE has 12x 50-seaters (sometimes 70-seats RJ), or 600 seats per direction, with almost zero O&D. Same as LAX-SAN (Which sees 1x 717 and 15x 70-seaters on weekday, for 1160 seats per direction, again with nearly zero O&D.

SCQ83 wrote:

Within Europe I imagine AMS-Paris is overserved. The route had 1.2 million PAX in 2017 and it is a monopoly of AFKL. It has to compete with the train. So even easyJet (despite being strong in both AMS and Paris) does not bother with it.

Globally a lot of ME3 routes are clearly overserved, specially QR and Doha. How many local PAX are on a Doha-Krabi flight?

Two major hubs between two partners of the same consortium, so connecting traffic is very very big. Not that strange. They both connect too each others and partner airline banks, so demand is rightly huge.
O&D is indeed served via Thalys, but HV does fly to Paris Orly I believe.

FlyRow wrote:

O&D is indeed served via Thalys, but HV does fly to Paris Orly I believe.

Very true. Air France and KLM have a duopoly on the Amsterdam - Charles de Gaulle route. Until Transavia started Orly - Amsterdam this route was unserved.

By the way, some connecting traffic is also routed on the train. Both airports got a train station that is served on the Thalys and the trains got a flight number that can be included in a booking with Air France-KLM. This is specially done to attract Belgian customers who can start their journey in Brussels. They take the train to Amsterdam or Paris and then connect to their flight, all on the same ticket.

However Amsterdam is the only airport in the Netherlands that has flights to Paris. You'd expect Rotterdam or Eindhoven to have a connection to either Charles de Gaulle or Orly, but no. If you do a search for flights from Eindhoven to Paris you're routed through Amsterdam. First on the KLM bus that links Maastricht and Eindhoven to Schiphol and then on either a flight or a train to Paris.

PatrickZ80 wrote:

FlyRow wrote:

O&D is indeed served via Thalys, but HV does fly to Paris Orly I believe.

Very true. Air France and KLM have a duopoly on the Amsterdam - Charles de Gaulle route. Until Transavia started Orly - Amsterdam this route was unserved.

By the way, some connecting traffic is also routed on the train. Both airports got a train station that is served on the Thalys and the trains got a flight number that can be included in a booking with Air France-KLM. This is specially done to attract Belgian customers who can start their journey in Brussels. They take the train to Amsterdam or Paris and then connect to their flight, all on the same ticket.

However Amsterdam is the only airport in the Netherlands that has flights to Paris. You'd expect Rotterdam or Eindhoven to have a connection to either Charles de Gaulle or Orly, but no. If you do a search for flights from Eindhoven to Paris you're routed through Amsterdam. First on the KLM bus that links Maastricht and Eindhoven to Schiphol and then on either a flight or a train to Paris.

No need for a rtm flight, especially when a twice? direct ams-rtm-cdg thalys service will start soon.

PatrickZ80 wrote:

You'd expect Rotterdam or Eindhoven to have a connection to either Charles de Gaulle or Orly, but no.

KLM Cityhopper did operate the Rotterdam - Paris CDG route in the past. I made a return trip once, in 1998, on the Fokker 50. Nice memories. Today the train between Rotterdam and Paris takes around 2,5 hours, city center to city center. That's very hard to beat.

Not from RTM but EIN is not connected to the Thalys. I'm sure HV could make EIN-ORY work.

Eindhoven wrote:

Not from RTM but EIN is not connected to the Thalys. I'm sure HV could make EIN-ORY work.

Bit further south but when I worked in southern Limburg I had friends and colleagues who travelled frrquently to Paris and all either drove (3.5 hours) or took the Thalys or Flixbus.

Airports with multiple hub operations seems to have plenty of service (LAX, ORD, DEN, MCO). Connect them with their busiest routes.

I expect that most airlines relying on transit traffic sit in this category. AC runs multiple large widebodies between Toronto and LAX, SFO, and YVR in additional to all of the narrowbodies they run on those routes for frequency. O/D is YYZ is strong, but not *that* strong, so I think the numbers are based significantly on transiting traffic. I mean, AC is apparently operating a 77W on YYZ-SFO this summer, in addition to a 787 and their 4 other daily non-stops (and numerous non-stops to YUL and YVR). That's a lot of seats.

HND-ITM would be up there. WB hourly flights by both JL and NH, yet they only average around 65%-70% LF.

Good thread.

i would expect KWI-DXB to be up there...

A gazillion daily frequencies on widebodies.

It's pretty difficult to tell though. Mature markets like Europe and the US might also have some.

Domestic routes with multiple frequencies..

Regards.

B8887

I would say the NYC area (JFK/LGA) - Miami area (MIA-FLL). Look how many nonstop flights a day American, Delta and JetBlue combined have together in each direction.