Connexion South is the presenting sponsor of Global Atlanta's France Channel. Sign up here for monthly France business and culture updates.
Market Access International is the presenting sponsor of Global Atlanta's Canada Channel. Subscribe here for monthly Canada newsletters.
The Netherland-America Foundation & The Netherlands American Chamber of Commerce for the Southeastern United States (NACCSE) are the presenting sponsors of Global Atlanta's Netherlands Channel. Subscribe here for monthly Dutch newsletters.
Hall Booth Smith P.C. is the presenting sponsor of Global Atlanta's Europe Channel. Subscribe here for monthly Europe newsletters.
Atlanta often seeks to showcase its global connectivity for business, with routes to far-flung locales like Seoul, Istanbul and Addis Ababa becoming staples in the world’s busiest airport’s international lineup.
A new Delta route to Riyadh, the Saudi capital, is in the offing, following on the heel’s of Etihad Airways recently amped-up new nonstop flight to Abu Dhabi, giving deeper reach for business travelers into key markets in the Middle East and India.
Still, however, the city’s international bread-and-butter routes lie in its Western Hemisphere neighborhood, where Delta dominates and intentional carriers can take advantage of the hometown airline’s domestic network and web of partnerships.
According to data from airline analytics firm Cirium, cited by the Atlanta Business Chronicle, the top routes by flight frequency were in Toronto (2,400 flights), the Canadian commercial hub, which narrowly edged out Cancun (2,394 flights), the Mexican tourism hub along the Caribbean Sea on the Yucatan Peninsula. Montreal, the commercial center of Quebec in Canada, was No. 7, with 1,437 flights, as Air Canada supplemented Delta’s nonstops with two per day of its own.
Mexico City was No. 4, showing the Mexican capital’s cultural magnetism, but also the strength of Delta’s links to Mexico and its partner Aeromexico’s operation in Atlanta. According to Simple Flying, also citing Cirium, Aeromexico was the top international carrier out of Atlanta, with 232 flights and 22,968 seats scheduled out of Atlanta in December. Air Canada also serves Toronto, but with 178 flights in December sits behind the top non-U.S. carrier to the Canadian market — Westjet, another Delta partner, with 184 flights, including a nonstop to Calgary, Alberta.
Other Caribbean routes showed the appetite for Atlantans (and those using Hartsfield-Jackson’s massive transit operation) to access tourism routes: No. 8 and 9, respectively, were Montego Bay, Jamaica, and Punta Cana, Dominican Republic. Delta has been expanding to other hard-to-reach Caribbean locations, like Grenada and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, even as other carriers like Frontier deepen their access to Caribbean and Mexican destinations.
Other top-10 routes showed the potency of Delta’s transatlantic joint ventures: London Heathrow, served by Delta and Virgin Atlantic, sat at No. 3, while Paris and Amsterdam, served by Delta JV partners Air France and KLM, respectively, were Nos. 5 and 6.
The only Asian market to crack the top 10 was Seoul, served by another Delta joint-venture partner — Korean Air — along with daily nonstop service from Delta.
Atlanta’s top international destinations, according to Cirium:
- Toronto (YYZ) – 2,400 flights
- Cancun (CUN) – 2,394 flights
- London Heathrow (LHR) – 1,820 flights
- Mexico City (MEX) – 1,684 flights
- Paris Charles de Gaulle (CDG) – 1,643 flights
- Amsterdam (AMS) – 1,459 flights
- Montreal Trudeau (YUL) – 1,437 flights
- Montego Bay (MBJ) – 1,396 flights
- Punta Cana (PUJ) – 1,269 flights
- Seoul (ICN) – 1,093 flights
Domestically, Orlando was Atlanta’s top pairing, with 8,143 flights and 1.4 million passengers, followed by New York-La Guardia, Washington National, Dallas-Fort Worth and other metros/airports.
See the top domestic destinations by passengers on the U.S. Department of Transportation’s statistical website here.