Global aviation market briefing
Frequency, capacity and ASK data for airlines worldwide
July 2026
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Weekly scheduled flight counter
Flights in the schedule 29th December 2025 - 26th July 2026
Our flight frequency counter shows the number of (one-way) flights in the schedule from Monday 29th December 2025* to the end of the current week. With 21,887,026 flights in total to the end of this week, the average number of commercial flights per day is 104,224 .
*The 'year' runs from Monday 29th December 2025 when week one of the schedule starts.
How is global airline capacity trending in 2026?
Global weekly capacity: domestic & international
Europe accounts for the growth of 6 million seats this month, and North East Asia also showing strong capacity growth, up 3.4 million seats on last year. There are five regions offsetting the growth, with less capacity this July versus last year, namely the Middle East (-1.7m seats), South Asia (-880,000 seats), South East Asia (-550,000 seats) North America (-400,000 seats) and the Caribbean (-200,000 seats). The region showing the largest growth rate is Central/Western Africa which is up 16.9% on last year.
Which regions are growing or declining in July 2026?
Global capacity is up 1.5% in July 2026, with strong growth in Europe (+6m seats) and North East Asia (+3.4m seats). Five regions are contracting year on year: the Middle East (−7.0%), the Caribbean (−4.2%), South Asia (−3.7%), South East Asia (−1.4%) and North America (−0.3%). The fastest-growing region by rate is Central/Western Africa, up 16.9% to 3.3 million seats, followed by North Africa (+8.0%) and Eastern/Central Europe (+6.8%).
Capacity by region: scale vs trajectory
Which airlines are operating most flights in July 2026?
Alaska Airlines continues to show strong frequency growth with 19.4% more flights year on year, as a result of the recent integration of Hawaiian Airlines into Alaska Airlines. In Europe, Ryanair continues to grow, up 6.2% this month compared to last July, and the other major European airlines in growth this month are easyJet and Turkish Airlines, which are up 2.1% and 1.5% respectively. Across the top 20 airlines, three are reducing capacity by more than 3%; IndiGo is down 3.9%, All Nippon Airways is down 5.5% andr Deutsche Lufthansa AG is down 9.9%.
Top 20 airlines by frequency
Which airlines have the most international ASKs in July 2026?
While Emirates and Qatar Airways are down between 6% and 7% this month, this is significantly less than the reductions last month when both airlines were down between 15% and 16% which suggests the Middle East situation is, to some degree, stabilising compared to recent months. In addition, Etihad Airways continues to show strong growth in ASKs, up 15.5% this month. Strong ASK growth is taking place amongst other carriers with Air China up 11% and the LATAM Airlines Group up by 10.9% year on year. Apart from Emirates and Qatar Airways, the only other carriers down this month in terms of Int. ASKs are Delta Air Lines which is down 0.2% and United Airlines which is down 1.5%.
Top 10 airlines by international ASKs
Which international country pairs are busiest in July 2026?
Spain - United Kingdom is the largest international country pair this month, with 6.4m seats, which up 470,000 on last year which is the largest increase in seat capacity within the top 20.
Country-pair flows on the map
Source: OAG · July 2026 scheduled capacity · bidirectional pairs
In terms of growth rates, the China - Republic of Korea market is showing the largest growth rate, up 16%, this is followed by Italy - Spain and Japan - Republic of Korea which are up 12.5% and 11.2% respectively. There are three markets which are down more than 5% this month versus July 2025: India - UAE (-5.9%), Mexico - USA (-7.8%) and Turkiye - United Kingdom (-9.8%).
Which domestic markets are growing fastest in July 2026?
Similar to last month there is mixed performance amongst the world’s largest domestic markets this month. The USA, India, Japan and Australia are all contracting, with India showing the most significant rate of decline, down 4.6% on last year. The strongest growth rate comes from Mexico, with an increase of 7.2% year on year, which is followed closely by Turkiye, which is up 7.1%. The market with the largest growth in seats is China, which is up 3.69 million seats (+4.7%), unlike last month when the Chinese domestic market was almost flat, up only 0.5%.
Global capacity this month has increased by 8.3 million seats compared to July 2025, equivalent to an increase of 1.5%.