Easter Holidays Boost European Departures

We track scheduled flights (what’s planned) and tracked flights (what took off) from a sample of the largest airports across the world.

Looking at data up to 3 April 2023:

• Average global departures sit above 122,000 per day, up 1,000 per day from the last report. They remain the highest since January 2020 and sit above 2019 levels (Chart 1).
• European departures have soared as German strikes concluded, allowing Munich (+55.1% WoW) and Frankfurt (+26.3%) departures to rebound, and Easter half-term holidays began across the continent (Chart 3). Rome (+12.6%), London Gatwick (+12.1%) and Barcelona (+10.9%) all saw a double-digit departure growth rate.
• The China re-opening continues. Passengers from 34 specific countries* can now fly directly to China using just an Antigen Rapid Test, according to announcements by several Chinese embassies.
• Elsewhere, departures slipped 1.4% lower from the US.

* Thailand, Indonesia, Cambodia, Maldives, Sri Lanka, Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, Laos, United Arab Emirates, Egypt, South Africa, Kenya, Russia, Switzerland, Hungary, New Zealand, France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Denmark, Greece, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Iran, Vietnam, Nepal, Tanzania, Georgia, Serbia, Azerbaijan, and Brunei

Information on long-term movements in flight data is available below.

China

Japan

Hong Kong

South Korea

Singapore

Thailand

US

UK

Italy

Spain

Germany

France

Canada

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 Researcher at Macro Hive. Ben studied BSc Financial Mathematics at Cardiff University and MSc Finance at Cass Business School, his dissertations were on the tails of GARCH volatility models, and foreign exchange investment strategies during crises, respectively.

Photo Credit: depositphotos.com

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