Europe's aviation recovery absorbs Omicron and war

European aviation is demonstrating its resilience. The continent's capacity recovery has more or less absorbed both the Omicron variant of the coronavirus and the war in Ukraine. Although passenger traffic recovery has lagged capacity recovery, there is also evidence of resilience in booking trends.

Europe's seat capacity is down by 20.3% versus 2019 in the week of 11-Apr-2022. This is 0.5ppts worse than last week and 3.0ppts worse than two weeks ago, but almost back to its level before the Omicron wave and the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Europe is fourth in the regional ranking, above Asia Pacific, where capacity is down by 36.0%, and Middle East, where capacity is down by 21.0%. Africa capacity is down by 14.8%, North America by 11.3%, and Latin America by 8.3%.