OAG Travel News

This may be the 11th successive month of cutbacks in global airline schedules; however the rate of decline in seat capacity is lower than at any time since October 2008, reports OAG, (www.oagaviation.com), the world’s leading aviation data business, as it releases its monthly report on trends in the supply of airline flights and seats.

The world’s airlines have scheduled 4% (104,216) fewer flights for June 2009 compared with the same month last year, with a 2% drop in seat capacity of 6.7 million fewer seats. The total number of flights scheduled to operate worldwide this month is 2.43 million, offering 297.5 million seats to travelers around the globe.

Last month, the year-on-year global frequency and capacity figures were down by 5% and 3% respectively. Global year-on-year capacity reductions had remained at 3% every month since November 2008, apart from a sharp 7% decline in February this year. This can be seen in chart format here.

David Beckerman, vice president OAG Market Intelligence, said, “As the Northern Hemisphere begins its summer holiday season, the airline community is curbing its capacity cuts in anticipation of a welcome boost in air travel. However, we shouldn’t assume that this is the start of recovery and growth; the outlook remains uncertain and figures are still down year-on-year, but it does indicate a glimmer of economic confidence.”

The figures are revealed in the June 2009 edition of OAG FACTS (Frequency & Capacity Trend Statistics), the dynamic monthly market intelligence tool providing the latest data on current passenger airline activity around the world.

OAG FACTS uses interactive graphs to display a visual trend of the performance of a specific airport, route, country or region from 2001 onwards, sourced from OAG’s consolidated database of global airline schedules. A more detailed review of this month’s OAG FACTS statistics – including information about specific regions, routes and airports with illustrative charts and graphs – is available to download .

OAG, part of UBM Aviation (www.ubmaviation.com), provides essential aviation workflow data and analytics sourced from its comprehensive proprietary airline schedules, fleet and MRO databases.