Summer Schedule Status Quo
12 July 2006
- Americas’ aviation activity increases one per cent
- Transatlantic growth, transpacific status quo
- US Capacity drops 5 per cent over 2005 levels
- Atlanta, Chicago hubs attract more international services
Chicago July 2006: While airlines continue to pour their resources into the rest of the world, aviation activity in the Americas remains flat, according to the latest figures from OAG.
Airlines have this month published 1,520 more flights to and from the USA and Canada than they scheduled in July 2005, and an extra 571 flights to and from Central and South America. In both cases, the additional services amount to a one per cent year-over-year increase.
The growth figures compare with a 16 per cent increase in flights to and from the Middle East and an 11 per cent increase in flights to and from the Asia-Pacific region. Intercontinental flights to and from Africa and Europe are ten per cent and nine per cent higher, respectively.
Worldwide, as in the Americas, the total number of flights is just one per cent higher.
On transatlantic routes between North America and Western Europe, airlines have added capacity – the number of flights scheduled is up five per cent over July 2005. On North American transpacific routes, however, there has been zero growth. The number of flights between North and Latin America is just one per cent higher.
Capacity within the United States domestic region has dropped by 5 percent, with than 43,000 fewer flights scheduled than in July of 2005. This reduction equates to a reduction of more than 4 million seats available to travelers.
“Airlines use highly-sophisticated tools and techniques to predict market trends, which means that their schedules are a fairly accurate reflection of consumer travel demand,” says Joe Laughlin, Vice President of Sales and Service for OAG America.
“While the growth rates appear relatively small, it has to be remembered that airlines will operate more than one million flights to, from and within North America this month alone. The equivalent figure for Europe is less than 700,000, and in the case of the Middle East it is less than 70,000.”
On key routes from US gateway airports, there have been some significant capacity increases. The number of flights between Atlanta Hartsfield and Western Europe, for example, is up 21 per cent compared with July 2005, and both Atlanta and Chicago O’Hare have seen increases in scheduled services to and from Latin America.
And although the number of low-cost flights within the States has actually declined since July last year, OAG calculates that 13 per cent – one in eight – of all scheduled flights are operated by low-cost carriers.
The figures are revealed in OAG’s latest Quarterly Airline Traffic Statistics, a regular snapshot of airline activity around the world. OAG collates data from more than 1,000 scheduled airlines, on a daily basis, to give an overview of anticipated travel demand.
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For further information please contact:
For further information about OAG please contact Joe Laughlin, VP Sales and Service at 630-515-3203 jlaughlin@oag.com or Kathy Marr, VP Marketing and Publisher at 630-515-3240 kmarr@oag.com.
About OAG
OAG is a global travel and transport information company.
We have three core activities:
? managing and distributing information within the passenger and cargo aviation sectors
? providing travel information to business travellers
? providing advertising and promotion opportunities for the aviation and travel communities.
Our business is underpinned by our data management expertise. We hold a breadth of travel related content and are best known for our airline schedules database. This holds future and historical flight details for 1,000 airlines and more than 3,500 airports. Every ten seconds a flight is updated on the OAG system. Over the coming year we are tracking around 28 million departures.
Using these vast databases, we provide a broad range of multi-lingual products for business and consumer customers, available in virtually any way the customer wants it: Internet, PDA, mobile, digital and print.
We are a private company with 400 employees based in 9 offices in Europe, the Americas and Asia.
More information about our company, our products and our services is available on our web sites www.oag.com, www.oagdata.com and www.oagcargo.com.