We continue to monitor scheduled capacity from airlines around the world. Last week we wrote that the capacity growth is not gaining momentum, but this week this is not the case any more. The last week of June brought massive 20% capacity growth worldwide. Yes, it is still below 50% of “normal capacity” at this time of the year, but this may lead toward a paced recovery this industry is waiting for.

The total number of seats scheduled for the current week jumped to 48.4 million seats – up by 8 million seats compared to what airlines scheduled for the week earlier. It will be interesting to see if this fast-paced recovery will continue growing into the Northern Hemisphere summer.

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

Asia was the first region that brought optimism to the industry, but the last few weeks were quite bouncy for capacity numbers. The last week of June brought back growth – capacity is up by 15% compared to the week before. Now, the capacity stands at 26.5 million weekly seats. This is the closest to the “normal” level from all the regions where we saw around 40 million seats last year around this time.

When trying to understand Asia, we separately look to the Chinese domestic market, which on one hand consists of half of all the Asian capacity and on the other hand was the first market to recover post-covid19. Last week we saw a drop in scheduled capacity mainly due to new limitations introduced for flights from Beijing after number of Covid-19 cases increased. This week the capacity bounced back almost to the top of the “new normal.”

Airlines in North America continue to grow capacity every week. If the month of May was flat with record-bottom numbers, the industry is now recovering and for the first time jumped to over 10 million scheduled seats for the current week. This is more than 1 million seats growth in one week – the capacity jumped by 15%.

But the real star in terms of capacity growth this week is third-largest region for the industry – Europe. Airlines added 45% more seats for this week’s schedules compared to the week before. The market size now stands at 8.5 million seats – triple that of the lowest point of 2.5 million seats. Still, there is a long way to the real recovery – the industry lacks more than 10 million seats in the schedules. We expected further growth in upcoming weeks as many airlines resumed flights starting July 1 and many countries reduces travel limitations for the new month.

Percentage-wise South America actually was the region that outgrow other parts of the world this week. Airlines added almost 60% more seats in the current’s week schedules, but that is still less then 1 million seats scheduled to depart South American airports. This region was the most heavily impacted by the current crisis and it may take a lot of time to recover even at high-paced growth.

Airlines also managed to grow the capacity in African countries. After reductions the week before, airlines added more seats for the current week. We will continue to monitor further the capacity trends in this region.

The recovery in Oceania started earlier than in the other small regions (in terms of airline market size) of Africa and South America. Airlines grew the capacity mainly in domestic markets in this region. Compared to the summer peak kicking off in Europe and North America, winter has just started in this part of the world, making recovery even more difficult.

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