Europe aviation: don't expect 2019 capacity levels before 2024 or 2025

Projections for Europe's seat capacity in 4Q2022 derived from current airline schedules anticipate no change from the narrow range of 86%-87% of 2019 levels that has persisted almost every week since late May-2022.

Schedules for 1Q2023 project this stepping up to 90%, but there is currently no obvious spark that will catalyse such a move, and the capacity recovery could very well continue to be range-bound.

In the week of 24-Oct-2022 seat numbers are at 86.6%, which is a shortfall of 13.4% against the equivalent week in 2019.

Given operational constraints and economic concerns, it seems reasonable to conjecture that a return to 2019 levels of capacity may not occur in Europe until 2024 or 2025. Indeed, EUROCONTROL's Oct-2022 update for flight numbers anticipates movements above 2019 levels only in 2025.