AIRLINE FREQUENCY AND CAPACITY STATISTICS

AIR TRAVEL DATA FROM THE EXPERTS

Which is the biggest airline in the world? Which country pairs have most capacity this month? How many flights are there per day, worldwide? Our Airline Frequency and Capacity Statistics answer all these questions and more with key facts and figures about travel, using flight data from OAG's Schedules Analyser; a cutting-edge platform for airline schedule analysis. 

SCHEDULED FLIGHT COUNTER

FLIGHTS IN THE SCHEDULE 30TH DECEMBER 2024 - 19TH JAnuARY 2025

Our flight frequency counter shows the number of (one-way) flights in the schedule from Monday 30th December 2024* to the end of the current week.

With 2,052,871 flights in total to the end of this week, the average number of commercial flights per day is 97,755.

 

*The 'year' runs from Monday 30th December 2024 when week one of the schedule starts.

 

WEEKLY AIRLINE CAPACITY DATA

 

HOW MUCH AIRLINE CAPACITY IS SCHEDULED THIS WEEK?

This chart shows the most recent weekly global (domestic + international) , domestic and international airline capacity. The dotted line represents capacity in the airlines' future schedules for the next 11 weeks. 

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TOP TWENTY AIRLINES | JANUARY 2025

 

WHICH IS THE Biggest AIRLINE IN THE WORLD THIS MONTH?

  • United Airlines is the carrier amongst the Top 20 largest which is adding the most flights this month compared to last January, with an increase of 11,025 frequencies.
  • IndiGo is adding a similar volume, increasing frequencies by 10,012 compared to last year. IndiGo is also the fastest growing airline in the Top 20, up 16.9% in terms of growth rate in frequencies since last year, following by Hainan Airlines up 11.5% compared to last year.
  • Three of the top 20 airlines are declining this month compared to January 2024. Interestingly of the three airlines, two are the large LCCs - Southwest (down 8.9%) and Ryanair (down 1.5%). The other airline in decline is Deutsche Lufthansa AG which is down 10.2% in terms of frequencies compared to last year.

 

TOP TWENTY COUNTRY PAIRS FOR TRAVEL | JANUARY 2025

 

WHICH TWO COUNTRIES VISIT EACH OTHER MOST?

  • Similar to December 2024, the markets showing the strongest growth this month involve China at one end; China - Japan is up by 61.9% and China-Thailand is up by 54.1%.
  • Japan also features in two other Top 20 country markets, with strong growth taking place between Japan - South Korea (13.7%) and Japan - Chinese Taipei (16.7%).  
  • Two of the Top 20 international country pairs are contracting this month, with capacity between Canada and the US down by 1.6% (-48k seats) compared to January 2024, and Ireland - UK which is down by 3.9% (-49k seats).
  • In addition to the USA - Canada market which is declining, the other markets in the Top 20 involving the USA are the markets with the slowest growth rates, namely Puerto Rico - USA (+3.8%), Mexico - USA (+1.3%) and UK - USA (+0.1%).

 

DOMESTIC MARKETS | JANUARY 2025

 

WHERE IS MOST DOMESTIC CAPACITY THIS MONTH?

  • The fastest growing domestic market this month amongst the Top 10 largest is India, up 11.8%.
  • The domestic market showing the largest volume growth in seats this month is China, up 2.66m seats over January 2024, which is the 2nd largest domestic market after the USA but is closing the gap in terms of seat capacity. China is now less than 8.5m seats behind the USA - this gap was 10.3m seats 12 months ago in January 2024.  
  • Three of the Top 10 domestic markets are declining this month, with Indonesia down by 3.6%, Australia down by 2.7% and Japan marginally down by 0.05%.

 

AIRLINE CAPACITY BY REGION | JANUARY 2025

 

WHICH WORLD REGION HAS MOST FLIGHT CAPACITY?

  • Global capacity in January 2025 will reach 483.9m seats, an increase of 5.5% on last January. Carriers have added 25.3m seats across a range of regions including Asia Pacific (14m extra) and Europe (5.4m extra seats).
  • The region seeing strongest growth rate is North Africa, where capacity has increased by 14.7% compared to last year and the rate of growth in Central Asia is also at a similar rate, with an increase of 12.4% on last January.
  • Although growing fast, Central Asia remains the smaller region globally with 2.6m seats in January, just 0.5% of global capacity. 

THE BUSIEST AIRPORTS OF 2O24

AIRLINE FREQUENCY AND CAPACITY STATS DECODED

 

All data is sourced from OAG Schedules and is for the current month and previous months stated per chart. Data is unadjusted for the leap year effect. 

The categories are defined below:

  1. The scheduled flight counter shows the number of flights in the schedule from the first day of the year up until the end of the current week.
  2. Weekly airline capacity shows total global (international + domestic) capacity, international capacity and domestic capacity, measure in seats. It is plotted weekly with a forward view of filed scheduled capacity for the 11 weeks ahead, showing the overall 3 months forward-looking position.
  3. Top 20 Airlines are the 20 largest global airlines by flights based on the current month.
  4. Top 20 Country Pairs are those international country pairs with most seat capacity based on the current month.
  5. Domestic Markets are the 10 largest markets by seats.
  6. Seats by Region is seat capacity for the current month to, from and within each global sub region.

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