European aviation capacity recovery lacks impetus for next upward step

The easing of international travel restrictions helped to drive Europe's capacity recovery in early summer 2021. Weekly seat capacity improved from 26% of 2019 levels in late Apr-2021 to 66% in early Aug-2021. However, the recovery has lost momentum over the past two months

Total seat numbers in Europe are now 33.0% below 2019 levels in the week of 4-Oct-2021. This is 67% of 2019 - barely changed from early Aug-2021, in spite of modest gains last week.

Europe remains in fourth place in the regional capacity recovery ranking. Asia Pacific, where seat capacity is down by 39.6% versus 2019, remains at the bottom. This week, week commencing 04-Oct-2021, The Middle East is down by 36.9%, Africa by 31.2%, Latin America by 23.7%, and North America by 19.7%.

There is a wide range in the pace of recovery among Europe's leading aviation markets.

Russia is at 89%, whereas the UK is at just 54% of 2019 seat levels. All appear to be fading in impetus to make the next significant upward step. The further easing of travel restrictions, for example as in the UK from 4-Oct-2021, has already been taken into account in airline schedules.