It's gotta be Alaska. Just due to size and the fact that other than Anchorage-Fairbanks roads aren't an option even if you wanted to drive. You've got regular flights from Anchorage to a dozen different regional hubs and then flights from those hubs to the larger villages in their area, plus all the puddle jumpers serving the smaller villages. Then you also add in Juneau and Fairbanks as secondary options with service to the Lower 48 with their own spokes. Texas and California have a whole lot more people but they also aren't completely dependent on air like Alaska is.

Well, then of course we should propose answers for multiple metrics.:D

I have a short list but it's all mainline: NY, PA, MI, IL, TX, CA.

BTW the strangest flight would be SFO-OAK, operated with TWA wide-bodies (probably the L-1011) in the late 1970s and 1980s so that they could claim direct flights between the east coast and OAK. The scheduled flight time was ten minutes. One travel agent tried to tell me that it was different time zones so that the flight duration would really be an hour and ten minutes.

In the 1970s there was scheduled helicopter service between LGA and JFK that could be tacked onto TATL tickets with carriers like LH.

They used to have helicopter flights between JFK T3 and the Pan Am Building (now MetLife Building) in Manhattan. I guess technically it wasn't an airport, though today there are helicopter flights between JRB (West 30th Street Heliport) and JFK, LGA, and JPX (East Hampton Airport).

There are also seaplane flights between 6N7 (New York Skyports Seaplane Base) and JPX.

-J.

There's a heliport on top of the Peninsula Hotel in Kowloon for flights to/from HKK airport. The waiting room is an air travel museum focusing on the history of aviation in Hong Kong.

In terms of passengers I think the ranking is probably CA > HI > TX > FL.

Some annual numbers I found on Wikipedia: LAX-SFO 1.3 million, SFO-SAN 604,000, SJC-SAN 582,000, SMF-SAN 600,000, SJC-LAX 451,000, LAX-OAK 433,000, OAK-SAN 404,000, SMF-LAX 358,000, SFO-SNA 337,000, SJC-SNA 291,000, OAK-BUR 282,000. This is hardly an exhaustive list, but altogether it suggests around 6-7 million annual passengers within California, maybe more.

HI has some busy routes: HNL-OGG with 1.1 million, HNL-LIH with 757,000, HNL-KOA with 733,000, HNL-ITO with 638,000, but numbers fall off quickly thereafter.

TX numbers don't seem to come close. HOU-DAL is only 416,000. DAL-SAT is 292,000. FL numbers also don't seem to come close. I think the busiest routes are MIA/FLL-MCO/TPA and none of those even register in top 10 destinations.

The busiest route in Alaska, ANC-FAI, had only 185,000 passengers in the 12 months ended February '24. Most other routes in Alaska have 4-5 digit annual passenger numbers.

Alaska probably wins in terms of number of scheduled routes and flights, though.

haha yes, I want to know the answers for all of those metrics

Those flights are out of scope because they aren't regularly scheduled and HK isn't a a US state.

The JW Marriott in Grand Rapids Michigan has a heliport on the roof to accommodate flights to GRR.

No idea if you can still do this, but it did exist.

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=10150333504869348



How ...... do you have to be to helicopter in to the Grand Rapids Marriott?

Also, can a helicopter fly between ORD and Grand Rapids?

At a distance of 137 miles, plenty of helicopters would have the range to do that flight. Even if they opted to follow the shore line to remain over land, you're looking at a distance of about 200 miles which still is within the range of many helicopters out there.