Flying at Pre-Pandemic Levels

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 9 January 2023:

• Global departures have reached 107,000 per day, levels comparable to 2019, but shy of the levels they were before COVID struck in 2020 (Chart 1).
• The return to 2019 levels can largely be attributed to China’s re-opening. With restrictions easing, activity has picked up across the country with departures from Beijing (+26.6% WoW) and Shanghai (+25.2% WoW) rising sharply. Most amendments to restrictions came into effect as of 8 January.
• Some of the recent increase is seasonal, however; the US (+3.7% WoW) and Europe (+3.0% WoW) also recorded strong increases.

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

US

UK

Italy

Spain

Germany

France

Canada

China

Japan

Hong Kong

South Korea

Singapore

Thailand

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.

(The commentary contained in the above article does not constitute an offer or a solicitation, or a recommendation to implement or liquidate an investment or to carry out any other transaction. It should not be used as a basis for any investment decision or other decision. Any investment decision should be based on appropriate professional advice specific to your needs.)