3 August
With one of the world’s largest airlines making nearly 800 schedule changes in one day and at the same time having to release over 17,000 dedicated employees, the challenges of running a scheduled airline are not getting easier.
 

27 July
Global capacity continues to creep forward was this week’s planned headline; then the UK Government stepped into to change that; thanks Boris! The blanket quarantine restriction for travellers from Spain despite most of the country recording lower Covid-19 levels than the UK will be the final nail in the coffin for some tour operators over this winter
 

20 July
A steady 3.5% growth in capacity takes us to just under 56 million seats this week as the slow recovery continues. The major “story” last week appears to have been the retirement of the BA B747 fleet; something that we had predicted months ago and yet somehow still manages to make headlines for an airline that really isn’t back flying yet.
 

13 July
Last week we were very close, this week we have broken through the 50 million weekly seats mark which is great news, however, at 53.8 million we remain at just 45% of the capacity available in the same week last year.
 

6 July
One thing COVID-19 has taught us is not to be greedy, an industry virtually brought to its knees in the first half of the year will take any growth possible even if it is only 3% more than last week.  

 

29 June
The first official week of Summer has resulted in the largest week on week growth in capacity during the covid-19 event with some 8.2 million seats added back around the globe. 

 

22 June
Week twenty-three of the Covid-19 crisis and the lowest week on week change in capacity reported. 39.911 million seats this week compared to 39.960 million last week.

 

15 June
 It’s over. The UK’s aviation dream was broken this morning when U2 883 departed from London Gatwick for Glasgow at 07:00; the first of some eleven scheduled flights from the airport today.

 

8 June
During two weeks in March, global capacity was falling at around three million seats a day, in the last two weeks capacity has increased by just over 440,000 seats a day.

 

1 June
It’s been a good week for scheduled airline capacity with nearly sixty airlines relaunching services; as we predicted last week everyone was just waiting for June! 

 

25 May
At last a quiet week in terms of capacity changes; at least at the headline level where total capacity fell by just over 2% and with some 31 million seats available remains above the lowest recorded point in the COVID-19 event.  

 

18 May
Its been a record breaking positive week for weekly capacity growth; we have broken through the 30 million weekly seat mark! That remains some 83 million seats below the same week last year or a “modest” 73% lower but with two weeks of consistent growth the numbers are at last growing.

 

11 May
In some countries the number 111 is believed to bring bad luck. In cricket it is called a “Triple Nelson”, feared by Australian cricketers more than an English bowling attack, but we might just be at the moment when after 111 days from the 20th January that we begin to see some modest capacity growth at a global level.

4 May
Tracking the impact of COVID -19 suddenly got a lot harder this week, if it wasn’t difficult enough already! Saturday evening saw Delta Air Lines alone file some 89,000 schedule changes in just one update sent to OAG as airlines in some parts of the world continue to dramatically cut capacity whilst in other parts others cautiously add back capacity.

27 April
Whisper it quietly but we may have reached the bottom…. scheduled airline capacity has increased for the first time in nearly ten weeks and perhaps reassuringly those green shoots of recovery are in more than one market.

20 April
Just two and a half million fewer scheduled seats this week compared to the previous week represents a 7% reduction and one of the slowest rates of decline mid-March perhaps indicating that we are now close to the bottom of capacity.

16 April
The Coronavirus Air, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act signed on the 27th March provides an unprecedented level of support to the US aviation industry in these most challenging of times.

15 April 2020
How low can we go? Which airlines will fare better? What is appropriate government support? These dominant themes came out of OAG’s latest webinars last week.

13 April
Some five million more scheduled seats were removed by airlines around the world for operation in the coming weeks, the lowest week of capacity cuts since the 16th March.

6 April 2020 
A further 11.1 Million seats were removed from the OAG database this week by scheduled airlines around the globe; equivalent to a 22.7% reduction week on week and the capacity cuts in Europe and North America continue.

1 April
Last week we launched a webinar series looking at the impact of COVID-19 on the air travel industry. We hosted two webinars, with over 5,000 people registered. The feedback was great and there were many questions. Following the webinars we also sent out a short questionnaire to gauge what the audience was thinking about where this current crisis will leave travel patterns once travel restrictions are lifted.

30 March
In the last seven days just over 20 million scheduled seats have been removed by airlines around the world; in percentage terms the last week has seen the single largest cut in capacity ever recorded by OAG at a global level. The aviation industry is now less than half the size reported in mid-January as carriers in the United States and India have worked through their recently announced changes.

25 March

Covid-19 has impacted the airline and the overall travel industry in unprecedented ways. According to OAG, the number of scheduled flights is down 12% year-over-year compared to the third week of March in 2019.

 

 

Published 12 March

According to OAG flight schedules, the ban will effect passengers arriving on nearly 7,000 flights over the next 4 weeks. If those flights were cancelled due to lack of demand that would remove close to 2 million seats each way from the market.

 

Published: 2 March 2020

The welcomed addition of another 2.9 million scheduled seats (18,200 flights) back into the Chinese domestic market provides a positive update on the impact of the Coronavirus event for the aviation industry. It also places China back as the second-largest market in the world; that may purely be a coincidence.

 

Published: 24 February 2020

If you believe the data, then this week sees the first signs of a recovery in capacity to/from and within China for the first time since the Coronavirus event; but are we perhaps seeing some “smoke and mirrors” changes to capacity? At OAG we only ever report the data submitted but we always question what’s behind the data.

 

 

Published: 6 February 2020

In the middle of a crisis it’s often hard to see beyond it, and to imagine life getting back to normal. The latest crisis to hit the aviation industry, and particularly China, punctuating every conversation at the moment is the Coronavirus.

 

6 April 2020 
A further 11.1 Million seats were removed from the OAG database this week by scheduled airlines around the globe; equivalent to a 22.7% reduction week on week and the capacity cuts in Europe and North America continue.