After the pandemic’s effect on the aviation industry in March, global airline capacity peaked in the last week of December 2020 with 63.1 million seats. The beginning of January 2021 has, however, brought another drop in capacity numbers. At the moment, the global size of the industry counts 59.1 million seats per week.

After reaching the peak in the second half of March 2020 with 32.9 million seats and a significant drop at the beginning of April, Asian capacity had an unstable growth until today, counting at the beginning of January 2021 – 31.2 million seats.

North America has reached a peak in mid-March with 28 million seats scheduled, after which the numbers significantly dropped and stagnated for more than four months. After a nominal growth during December and the beginning of January, the second week of January brought decreasing numbers again, with a total of 14.2 million scheduled seats per week.

After reaching a peak in mid-August, with 15.9 million scheduled seats, European capacity numbers dropped significantly until December, when they shortly recovered due to increased demand during the holiday season. Since the beginning of January 2021, however, they are decreasing again, with a current capacity of 7.1 million offered seats per week.

With a significant fall after reaching its peak in the mid of March 2020 with 5.5 million seats scheduled and the lowest point in mid-May, counting 310.322 seats only, South America continues with a stable road to recovery. It is now reaching a total of 3.3 million seats scheduled per week.

After reaching 3.4 million seats in mid-March and a significant fall to 1.2 million seats only a week after, the African market has shown us light amplitudes but still kept the rising trend. December brought stagnating numbers while the beginning of January counts a total of 1.7 million seats scheduled.

After a significant fall at the beginning of April, the recovery in Oceania had kept a positive trend in the last eight months and now counts 1.4 million offered seats per week.

With a load factor of 84%, GOL Linhas Aereas Inteligentes from Brazil leads the Top 25 Airlines list with the highest load factors in November. In November, the lowest load factor had Scoot from Singapore, with a load factor of only 14%.

We will continue to monitor the situation on capacities and will post on our blog. Follow us here and on LinkedIn.