For this month's aviation industry webinar, Deirdre Fulton and John Grant were joined by Siddharth Narkhede, Head of Airline Analysis at Ishka, to investigate the current operating environment for airlines.
The live panel discussed:
- With some recent big orders, how are airline fleets evolving? Who is leading in terms of growth, and where?
- How will future orders shape global fleets going forward?
- Can airlines accurately forecast demand in the current era of tariffs and geopolitical turmoil?
- Is lack of investment in infrastructure holding airlines back?
A look at growth trends
As usual, the panel began by starting at the top and looking at global growth trends before moving on to this month's subject matter:
- The data shows capacity for this summer is expected to be 3.1% ahead of 2024.
- For the year to date so far (January - May 2025), capacity is 3.3% ahead of the same months in 2024.
It's a narrowbody world
Next, the panel examined the current composition of capacity from an aircraft group type perspective, grouping current operations into five categories.
- Looking at a snapshot of how it breaks down in percentage terms, narrowbodies were almost 70% in 2015, they're now 76% of the market. So while some of the big orders recently have been for widebodies, it's a narrowbody world in terms of how people are travelling.
How will today's orders shape tomorrow's fleets?
Next, the panel looked forward to analyse what is on order as of now, across the same fleet categories:
- Asia has the largest fleet currently, accounting for a third of all aircraft. It also has the youngest fleet, with an average aircraft age of 12 years, meaning that more of the aircraft on order will facilitate growth rather than fleet replacement.
- For North America and Oceania, many more of the aircraft on order will be for replacement.
Infrastructure bottlenecks
Next, the panel discussed some of the key infrastructure investment challenges emerging, citing ATC as a key example:
Watch the webinar in full here: