Europe's airline capacity begins slow climb

Total seat numbers in Europe are down 84.6% year-on-year in the week of 18-May-2020, according to schedules from OAG combined with CAPA Fleet Database seat configurations.

This is almost 2ppts narrower than the previous week's 86.5% drop and the smallest rate of decline since Mar-2020. Nevertheless, it is the seventh successive week of cuts broadly in the -85% to -90% range.

Europe's cuts are no longer the world's deepest. That distinction now belongs to Latin America, where seats have dropped by 88.7% year-on-year. Seats are down by 80.8% in Middle East, 80.5% in Africa, 78.7% in North America and 51.6% in Asia Pacific. The rate of fall is narrowing in the three big regions - Asia Pacific, Europe and North America - but widening in the others.

Data based on filed schedules indicate that European aviation may be at the beginning of a slow rebuilding of capacity.

However, plans by Ryanair, IAG, Lufthansa and Air France-KLM imply that capacity for Europe's leading groups will still be reduced by around 50%-80% in Jul-2020. Even those plans are based on the lifting of restrictions.