AIRLINE FREQUENCY AND CAPACITY STATISTICS

WHICH IS THE Biggest AIRLINE IN THE WORLD THIS MONTH?

• Most of the world’s top twenty airlines are seeing growth this month, with some notable exceptions.
• Southwest has cut frequency this month again, down 3.2% against a backdrop of the other US majors who are all adding frequency - although American Airlines' increase is fairly small, just 0.3% this month compared to August 2024. IndiGo is also trimming back this month, down by 1.9%.
• Turkish Airlines continues to see strong growth, up 8.3% year-on-year, while LATAM Airlines Group has increased by 6.3%.
  

WHERE IS MOST DOMESTIC CAPACITY THIS MONTH?

• There is mixed performance amongst the world's largest domestic markets this month. Indonesia sees the biggest fall, down 12.7% year-over-year, with India, Japan, and the USA also seeing a contraction in capacity.
• Strong growth continues in Canada, up 7.5%, perhaps as more Canadians take vacations at home, and in Brazil, where the domestic market is up by 3.9%. Australia is also experiencing an uptick in domestic capacity, with a 3.6% year-over-year increase.
  

WHICH TWO COUNTRIES VISIT EACH OTHER MOST?

• Overall, the Top 20 busiest country pairs are growing at an average rate of 6.5% annually. At the top spot is Spain-UK, which continues to see steady growth at 6.1% year on year.
• Some markets are way ahead of this average - notably country pairs involving Japan, where double-digit growth is taking place. A notable example is China-Japan which has seen a surge in air travel, with capacity nearly 40% higher than last August. 
• However, some markets are declining, continuing the trend of recent months. Canada-USA is down by 4.4%, UK-USA is down by 1.5% and Germany-Spain is down 1%. There is also a considerable reduction in the once strong Russian-Turkiye market which is down by 9.5%.
  

WHICH WORLD REGION HAS MOST FLIGHT CAPACITY?

• Having peaked last month, global capacity is now slightly lower this month, at 555.2m seats. Capacity growth year on year has slowed down to 2.6% ahead of last year against the recent trend of 3% growth year on year.
• Central Asia continues to record very strong growth compared to last year, up 22.2%. Across Africa, capacity growth is strong, with Southern Africa leading the way at 9.4% ahead of August 2024.
• Meanwhile, capacity growth has stalled in South Asia, with a small reduction of 0.7% this August compared to last year, and also in North America, where there is an increase of just 0.1% on last year.
  

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.