Europe's aviation capacity recovery is no longer led by short and medium haul flying

Europe's overall capacity recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic is at 84% of 2019 seat numbers. It is now fairly uniform from Europe to most of the major route regions, Europe-Asia Pacific the exception. Seat numbers from Europe to every other region are now well over 80% of capacity flown in the equivalent week of 2019, with Europe-Africa up at 98%. However, Europe-Asia Pacific is only at 41%.

Europe's seat capacity shortfall of 16.0% versus 2019 in week commencing 9-May-2022 is fractionally lower than last week, but still its second best performance since before the COVID-19 crisis.

However, Europe remains fifth in the regional ranking, above only Asia Pacific, where capacity is down by -28.7%. Middle East capacity is down by -12.2%, while North America capacity is down by -10.4%, Africa by -6.2%, and Latin America by -4.7%.

The received wisdom for much of the pandemic was that short/medium haul routes would lead the recovery and this was largely true. However, capacity from Europe to the Americas is now slightly ahead of intra-Europe as a percentage of 2019 levels.