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We track scheduled flights (what’s planned) and tracked flights (what’s in the air) from a sample of the largest airports across the world. Looking at data up to 27 September, we find the following:
- On Sunday, there were 10,478 scheduled departures globally and 9459 actual take-offs, down -1.0% and up 1.9% WoW, respectively. Globally, flight departures are close to their 2021 highs but remain below 2019 levels (Chart 1).
- Across our five US airports, scheduled and tracked flights increased 0.09% and 0.22 % WoW, respectively. Tracked flights for LA increased the most (3.1%), followed by Atlanta (0.3%) while all other cities saw weekly declines (Chart 3). Overall, there were 4,124 flight departures from our selected US airports. Capacity is at 79% of pre-COVID levels (Chart 4), with Los Angeles highest (81%) and New York the lowest (76%).
- European air traffic decreased over the past week – planned flights were down -2.22% and actual flights -0.49% WoW. Munich and Madrid experienced the largest decrease (-2.4%) (Chart 3). On capacity, Milan Bergamo remains highest (93%) and Gatwick lowest (44%). On average, European airport capacity stands at 66% of pre-COVID levels.
- Across Asian airports, planned flights decreased -1.24% but tracked flights jumped 11.44% WoW. The jump was driven mainly by Beijing (34.8%) and Shanghai (11.6%) (Charts 2 and 3). Overall capacity stands at 63% of pre-COVID levels, with Beijing highest (88%) and Singapore the lowest (28%).
Information on long-term movements in flight data is available at the bottom of the page.
US
UK
Italy
Spain
Germany
France
Canada
China
Japan
Hong Kong
South Korea
Singapore
Bilal Hafeez is the CEO and Head of Research at 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.
Ben Ford is a macro research analyst at Macro Hive, and is currently finishing an MSc in Finance at Cass Business School.
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