A shortage of airline seats on routes to and from Jeju is dragging on, with load factors at near-capacity levels yet residents unable to secure tickets even for hospital visits.
Domestic flights departing Jeju in April fell 5.3 percent (680 flights) from a year earlier, while available seats dropped 6.8 percent (165,689 seats), according to aviation statistics from the Korea Airports Corporation released Tuesday. That amounts to more than 5,500 seats disappearing each day. The load factor reached 95.7 percent, but passenger numbers actually declined.
On the Jeju-Gimpo route, flights fell 6.4 percent (427 flights) and passengers dropped 5 percent (61,714 people). Compared with April 2024, two years earlier, flights decreased by 1,006 (7.6 percent) and passengers by 180,868 (7.6 percent), meaning about 34 flights per day have vanished.
The situation has not improved this month. From the 1st to the 14th, domestic flights to and from Jeju were preliminarily tallied to have fallen 3.4 percent (212 flights) and passengers 7.8 percent (80,751 people) from a year earlier.
In response, the Jeju Special Self-Governing Province Tourism Association has been conducting a signature campaign both online and offline since the 13th to "resolve the Jeju airline seat shortage and improve accessibility." The association had earlier visited the National Assembly's Land, Infrastructure and Transport Committee and the Fair Trade Commission to formally raise the seat shortage issue, and the signature campaign is a follow-up measure to spread public opinion and pressure for institutional improvement.
The industry traces the cause to the structure of slot realignment. In the process of the Korean Air-Asiana Airlines merger, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport raised the share of low-cost carriers (LCCs) to prevent monopoly, but because LCCs mainly operate smaller aircraft, the actual number of available seats declined even as flight frequency was maintained, according to analysis.
While supply appears to be maintained based on the number of flights, total transport capacity has fallen due to the downsizing of aircraft.
Given that Jeju is an island with absolute dependence on air travel, the impact of fewer seats extends beyond tourism inconvenience.
Essential travel demand, including hospital visits, business trips and family visits, is also being constrained, and among residents there are even remarks such as "I can't get a plane ticket even when I need to go to a Seoul hospital." Combined with higher fuel surcharges, the burden of airfare prices has grown, which critics point out is also leading to slowing tourism spending and a contraction of the regional economy.
Through this signature campaign, the association plans to demand that the government expand operations on Jeju routes, restore seat supply by deploying larger aircraft, flexibly operate slots during peak season, and strengthen institutional support to improve air accessibility. The signature results will be delivered to the government and the National Assembly as a formal petition.
"In the process of slot redistribution, the structural problem of Jeju route supply capacity actually weakening is recurring," said Kang Dong-hoon, head of the Jeju Tourism Association. "A policy shift is needed to establish a stable airline seat supply system."
