Europe's airline capacity climbs, but the schedules outlook is fiction

In the week commencing 8-Jun-2020, seat numbers in Europe were down by 84.7% year-on-year, according to schedules from OAG combined with CAPA Fleet Database seat configurations, which is 1.5ppts narrower than last week's 86.3% drop.

Europe now has the second deepest year-on-year capacity cut, after Latin America's 85.3% decline. Seats have dropped by 81.0% in Africa, 73.0% in North America, 72.7% in Middle East and 51.4% in Asia Pacific.

Unless there is a second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, Europe appears to have moved beyond the very worst of the capacity cuts. Nevertheless, it is still at a very low level of capacity.

Moreover, schedules data for the rest of the summer 2020 season are still projecting unrealistically high levels of capacity. For example, OAG/CAPA data for the week of 6-Jul-2020 project seats at 89% of 2019 levels. This is a fiction compared with announced plans from leading European airline groups to operate between 20% (Air France-KLM) and 60% (Wizz Air) of last year's capacity in 3Q2020.