The aviation industry's Summer Season gets started in a couple of weeks as airlines move to their Summer schedules. This month John and Deirdre were joined by Mikko Turtiainen, Sales, Strategy and Growth Lead at Condor.

The webinar started with a look at global airline capacity. For the summer season this year, airline capacity is expected to be 5.4% ahead of Summer 2019. While this is encouraging, John was – as ever – keen to remind us that without the pandemic we would have expected to see five years of growth between now and then.

Looking at the regional picture:

• Latin America is expecting to see the most capacity growth this summer, when compared to Summer 2019 seats will increase by 10.2%.
• North America continues to record strong growth too, with seat capacity projected to increase by 5.1% compared to Summer 2019.
• Africa is next highest with growth of 4% expected across the continent this summer.
• Asia Pacific is more steady as the region finally looks to have put the pandemic behind it, with overall capacity up 3.1% on Summer 2019.
• Capacity in Europe remains flat, largely because of the ongoing Ukraine/Russia war and reductions in some key domestic markets including Germany and France.
• The Middle East will see the smallest increase, just 1.9% on Summer 2019.

As the discussion moved along to country markets, Mikko explained that at Condor they’re seeing growth in bookings from the US and Canada for traditional European leisure resorts, with Italy and Greece looking particularly strong. This confirms that the US’s love affair with Europe continues!

To hear more of the chat from our most recent webinar, “Summer Incoming: Is The Aviation Industry Ready?”, watch the recording below. You can also download the slide deck for a closer view of the data.