Qatar Airways and Hamad International Airport are still gearing up for further passenger influx during the Eid Al Adha holidays.

The Cairo to Doha air corridor has been declared as one of the top 10 busiest international air routes by the Official Airline Guide (OAG), a prominent global travel data provider.

The route saw a massive 107,568 seats booked in June, positioning it in sixth place in the African continent.

Meanwhile, Cairo’s flight routes to Jeddah, Riyadh, and Kuwait secured the busiest in Africa. However, the Cairo to Jeddah route clinched the top spot in the Middle East region with a staggering 400,000 seats.

The booming numbers are still expected to increase as the country braces for a surge in passenger volume for the Eid Al Adha holiday period, set to take place until July 10.

To prepare for the surge, Qatar’s national carrier has relaunched its flight operations to several locations, including a freshly announced route to Tokyo Haneda Airport and Trabzon.

As disclosed by Akbar Al Baker, the Group Chief Executive of Qatar Airways and Chairman of Qatar Tourism, Qatar hit a new high in tourism with 1.5 million visitors in the first half of 2023 alone.

There are also ambitious plans to ramp up this figure to six million tourists per annum by 2030.

In June, the busiest international flight routes saw Kuala Lumpur to Changi top the charts with 417,982 seats.

Cairo to Jeddah, Hong Kong to Taipei, Dubai to Riyadh, and Seoul Incheon to Tokyo Narita followed suit, making up the top five.

The OAG bases its rankings on the highest volume of scheduled airline seats for the month. The figures, drawn from OAG Schedules Analyser, include both inbound and outbound flights for each route.

OAG has also reported an upward trend in international capacity, which has now reached 43.9 million seats.

Furthermore, the total global airline capacity has seen a boost of 1.6 million seats this week, tipping the scales at 111.4 million. This represents a 1.5% uptick from last week and a whopping 15.3% surge from the same week last year.

However, the number is still 3.6% below 2019 levels, so pre-Covid numbers have not yet been beaten. Looking ahead, OAG projects that global capacity will peak at about 117 million seats in the second week of August.