Jeju Air ranked first in domestic routes last year

Jeju Air Co. took first place with an 18.2% share of domestic routes in 2022 for the third straight year from 2020.

The airline said on Monday that it had flown 6,482,588 passengers on domestic routes last year based on real-time statistics from the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport's aviation information portal, and it was the highest figure in Jeju Air's history.

The number of passengers transported by the low-cost carrier was 4.64 million in 2017 but decreased to 4.3 million in 2020 due to the spread of COVID-19. As the pandemic lingered, the trend of preferring domestic travel instead of flying overseas continued, increasing again to 6.4 million in 2021.

Last year's passenger number was slightly more than that of 2021.

Most of Jeju Air's domestic passengers were going to destinations with Jeju as the departing point. About 5.4 million passengers boarded the route from Jeju to Gimpo, Busan, Cheongju, and Daegu, accounting for about 84% of the total.

Of these, 2.8 million used the Jeju-Gimpo flight. About 1 million, or about 16%, took the inland routes from Gimpo to Busan and Daegu, not including Jeju.

"Jeju Air has ranked first in the number of passengers transported on domestic flight routes for the third year in a row, following the number of passengers transported on Korea-Japan lines. This year, we will do our best to make the trip more enjoyable for international passengers as well as for domestic ones," said an official of Jeju Air.

Write to Jae-Fu Kim at hu@hankyung.com