March 2021 has been the third highest peak we have measured since the pandemic’s outbreak back in April last year. Worldwide scheduled seats are once more on the rise after a significant drop witnessed in the first week of February 2021 and currently count 60.9 million.
In Asia, the first two weeks of March saw an upward trend, after a significant drop at the beginning of February. At the moment, Asia counts 31.1 million seats scheduled, which closely resembles the last Asian market peak at the beginning of January with 31.2 million seats.
North America has been experiencing unstable growth for the past five months. However, since mid-February, it is evident that the number of seats scheduled is rising. The total number of seats currently scheduled in North America is 17.4 million, the highest since the outbreak of the pandemic.
After a short recovery during December, due to increased demand because of the holiday season, January and February brought a significant fall in the number of scheduled seats per week in Europe. March, however, brings a slight increase, counting at the moment 6.4 million seats.
South America’s capacity was growing until mid-January, when it started to decrease, hitting a low point in February. However, the market is recovering, and the numbers are slowly increasing again, with the current capacity per week in South America being 2.7 million seats.
During March, the African market has shown a slight increase in capacity, but still, it stagnates for the last two months, counting at the moment 1.6 million scheduled seats per week.
Oceania is on another road to recovery. After a significant drop in capacity during the first week of February, the number of seats scheduled has been steadily increasing over the last four weeks. At present, the number of seats scheduled is 1.5 million, which is more than during the previous peak in December 2020, when it was 1.4 million.
As of January, 2021 GOL Linhas Aéreas Inteligentes from Brazil has the highest load factor of 83.19%, making it the leader on the Top 25 Airlines list. The airline with the lowest load factor continues to be Scoot from Singapore, with 7.74%.