Air traffic volume in South Korea halved year-on-year in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic, government data showed Sunday.

The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport said the number of flight operations last year totaled 421,000, down 50 percent from 2019.

The volume on domestic routes fell 10.4 percent to 221,000, while international flights plummeted 66.4 percent to 200,000.

Air traffic had been steadily increasing, from 739,000 flights in 2016 to 842,000 in 2019.

Operations began to fall sharply in March last year after the nation was hit hard by the new coronavirus, the statics showed.

Traffic volume dropped in March, September and December in the wake of surges in infections and recovered in July, August, October and November, when the outbreak slowed down.

The Seoul-Jeju route was the busiest with 164,000 flights, down 47.5 percent from the previous year, the data showed. (Yonhap)