We continue to monitor scheduled capacity from airlines around the world. For the last two weeks the global size of the industry stands at 61 million scheduled weekly seats. We can see airlines in Europe are putting more and more seats into the supply, while other regions have flatter curves in capacity development.

We continue to monitor the data from the ch-aviation capacities module.

Asia, the first region to bring optimism to the industry, maintains very slow growth for the last five weeks. On average, for the last month, airlines are adding around 2.5% more seats each week. Chinese airlines are driving the capacity up – 9 of largest 10 airlines in the region by scheduled capacity are now airlines from China with the addition of ANA – All Nipon Airways in the fourth position by total capacity. The region continues to stay at slightly lower than 30 million scheduled weekly seats.

The second-largest region in the industry, North America, remains almost flat for the last four weeks. Airlines managed to add only 1 million seats during last five weeks and the size of the market now stands at 14.2 million seats compared to the “normal” of 30 million pre- Covid-19.

Airlines in Europe are not losing optimism and continue to add more seats into the supply. The market has more than doubled compared to the middle of June and now airlines have 13.8 million seats for the current week. If the trend continues, Europe may become a larger aviation market than North America in next few weeks, despite the fact that international flying is dominating European traffic and airlines (and passengers) need do deal with travel limitations imposed by various countries.

Low-cost airlines are now driving the recovery in Europe, with Ryanair taking 11.2% of capacity share this week, followed by Wizz Air (5.7%) and easyJet (4.2%). The subsidiary of Ryanair, Malta Air, takes fourth with another 4.2% of capacity share. easyJet numbers also are complemented by easyJet Europe numbers – this subsidiary takes sixth place with 3.7% market share. Air France has the largest capacity among flag carrier groups with 3.8% of capacity share, standing at fifth by scheduled seat capacity for the current week.

There is a very small positive sign in South America, where airlines added 10% more seats with the start of August. Still, the industry in this region is way below 20% of the size of what we saw the same time last year. The largest airlines in South America for now – GOL Linhas Aéreas Inteligentes, LATAM Airlines and Azul Linhas Aéreas Brasileiras — currently take 72% of total capacity in the region with an almost equal split among them.

The pace of the recovery in Africa remains slow, but the market has started to show some signs of the recovery at least. Carriers in Africa now have 1.3 million seats scheduled to depart the current week.

There is no recovery in the Oceania region as airlines now need to fight again with slow demand from additional imposed travel limitations. After jumping from the bottom in May and June, airlines now need to take a break for recovery to continue. Oceania remains the most heavily affected region worldwide by the drop in the capacity.

We will continue to monitor the situation on capacities and will post on our blog. Follow us here and follow our #chaviationcovid19updates on Linkedin.