Seat capacity situation update
Coronavirus Capacity Update Week Forty One: The last week has probably been one of the most depressing ever in the aviation industry as a series of airlines reported billion-dollar quarterly losses, major carriers announced large redundancy programmes and more and more scheduled airlines revealed plans to cut capacity by up to 30% over the IATA winter season.
The loss of another one million seats takes total global capacity down to 55.6 million, 52% of both the January base point and last year’s weekly total.
On the good news front travel bubbles are being tested and already bursting as travellers arriving within a bubble then catch a domestic flight to a destination outside of the bubble. Surely whoever thought about such bubbles had worked through some of the more obvious tactics travellers would use to get from A to B. Similar bubbles from Singapore to Hong Kong are in development and UK nationals are now singing their hearts out with travel to the Canary Islands now permitted.
And more than one million people were processed through TSA security points on Sunday the 18th October which is a positive trend over recent weeks.
Forward looking capacity remains optimistic given that we have seen a steady trend over the last month of capacity falling by around a million seats a week but at some point the tide has to turn, doesn’t it?
India continues to move up the country chart into third place as a consequence of another 270,000 seats being added with some 12% growth placing the country amongst the fastest growing major markets in the world. Only three of the top ten country markets saw an increase in capacity week on week.
Impressively, the United Kingdom re-entered the top ten by not seeing as heavy capacity cuts as both Spain and Germany which are now in 13th and 14th places respectively; Spain reporting 7% fewer seats and Germany 11%. With Vietnam in eleventh position and within 14,000 seats of the UK this week’s appearance may be no more than a brief visit to the top ten
