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We track scheduled flights (what’s planned) and tracked flights (what’s in the air). Looking at data up to 2 August we find the following:
- Flight growth is up in all airports, except Toronto, Vancouver, Chicago, Dallas and Tokyo (HAN). In total, there were 8,279 scheduled departures (up 14.7%) and 6,691 tracked departures (up 9.4%) over the last week.
- As we move into August, airports in Italy and Spain have seen large weekly increases in flights (Chart 1). All European airports on our list have experienced an increase, as airlines look to increase capacity during summer months.
- The two Canadian airports (Vancouver and Toronto) have seen a dip in scheduled flights. These airports are also running at just 31% and 24% capacity, respectively, which places them among the lowest operating levels in our sample.
- US airports have seen a mixed performance. Tracked flight departures from Chicago and Dallas have fallen, two cities which have seen a large number of COVID-19 cases. New York and Atlanta, on the other hand, have experienced an upturn in flights.
- Tracked flights out of Tokyo have fallen, as Japan struggles with a rise in COVID-19 cases. Japan Airlines Co (JAL) said yesterday that they expect domestic air travel demand to fall because of this second wave of infections.
- Other Asian airports have fared better. Tracked flights are up 10% on last week and Chinese airports are close to full capacity (Chart 3). Across all selected airports, capacity averaged 50% of late February levels (up from 44% last week).
Information on long term movements in flight data is available at the bottom of the page. To see how flight data has changed with COVID developments, see our COVID-19 Tracker.
Charts 1 & 2: Change vs One Week Before in Scheduled and Tracked Flights
Chart 3: Number of Tracked Flights vs Highest Daily Number of Tracked Flights Since 1 March
United States
UK
Italy
Spain
Germany
France
Canada
China
Japan
Hong Kong
South Korea
Singapore
Bilal Hafeez is the CEO and Editor of Macro Hive. He spent over twenty years doing research at big banks – JPMorgan, Deutsche Bank, and Nomura, where he had various “Global Head” roles and did FX, rates and cross-markets research.
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