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 1st JAN - 21st APRIL 2024

Our flight frequency counter shows the number of (one-way) flights in the schedule from 1st January 2024 to the end of the current week.

With 10,759,653 flights in total to the end of this week, the average number of commercial flights per day is 96,068.

 

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 | APRIL 2024

 

WHICH IS THE Biggest AIRLINE IN THE WORLD THIS MONTH?

  • The three US legacy carriers of American Airlines (AA), Delta Air Lines (DL) and United Airlines (UA) are the three largest carriers in the world in terms of frequencies this month. All three of these carriers are adding frequency year on year, AA (+9.2%), DL (+3.9%) and UA (+3.8%).
  • In terms of the top carriers with the highest percentage growth rates this month, the top carrier is Azul Airlines up 11.6% on April 2023, followed by IndiGo and Ryanair with frequency growth of 11.0% and 10.0% respectively.
  • There are three carriers in the Top 20 airlines by frequency which have seen a decrease in frequency in April 2024 compared to April 2023, Turkish Airline has seen the biggest decrease with a drop of 20.7% followed by JetBlue, down 10.8%,  and All Nippon Airways, down 2.4%.

 

TOP TWENTY COUNTRY PAIRS FOR TRAVEL | APRIL 2024

 

WHICH TWO COUNTRIES VISIT EACH OTHER MOST?

  • This month, Spain to UK is the largest international country pair with 4.4m seats, which is 9.8% higher than in April 2023.
  • The second largest country pair is Mexico to USA with 4.2m seats, which is 9.6% higher than last year.
  • The top three country pairs in terms of highest percentage growth compared to the same month last year all start or end in China: Japan - China (+200.8%), Republic of Korea - China (+108.3%) and Thailand - China (+87.7%).  This strong growth in these markets highlights how the China outbound market continues to recover.
  • Every country pair in the Top 20 this month is up compared to last April with the exception of Ireland - UK which is down 4.1% (55,333 seats) compared to April 2023. 

 

DOMESTIC MARKETS | APRIL 2024

 

WHERE IS MOST DOMESTIC CAPACITY THIS MONTH?

  • The USA remains the largest domestic market in the world this month, by a considerable margin of 16.9 million more seats than second placed China.
  •  The USA domestic market is up 4.3% on last April with 86.1 million seats.
  • China's domestic market growth has slowed, this month up 1.4% compared to growth of 7.8% in March 2024.  The domestic market with the highest percentage growth compared to last year is Indonesia which is up 21.9% (+1.84m seats).
  • The domestic markets declining this month compared to April 2023 are Mexico, which is down 7.9% on April 2023, and Japan, which is down 2.1% on April 2023. 

 

AIRLINE CAPACITY BY REGION | APRIL 2024

 

WHICH WORLD REGION HAS MOST FLIGHT CAPACITY?


  • Global capacity will reach 483.9 million this month, an increase of 7.8% on the same month in 2023, which equates to 35 million more seats.
  • Every region of the world is growing this month compared to the same month in 2023 apart from Central America  and Central/Western Africa where capacity has dropped by 0.7% (78,518 seats) and by 2.5% (74,723 seats) respectively.
  • The region seeing the highest percentage growth is Central Asia with capacity increasing by 17.4%, equivalent to a 338,594 seat increase.
  • The regions showing strong volume growth are Western Europe where capacity is up 8.3m seats, equivalent to a 9% increase, and North East Asia where capacity is up 7.5m seats, equivalent to a 7.6% increase.  
  •  

AVIATION NETWORK CHAMPIONS ASPAC   Join us in celebrating the region's top airlines and airports.  

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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