Gatwick Departures Increase with Half-Term Holiday

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 25 October, we find the following:  

• On Sunday, there were 10,618 scheduled departures globally and 9,560 take-offs, up 1.1% and down 0.1% week on week, respectively. Globally, flight traffic is approaching 2021 highs but remains below 2019 levels (Chart 1). 
• US flight traffic changed only marginally. Scheduled flights grew 0.84%, but take-offs decreased 0.1% versus last week. Dallas (2%) recovers most lost flights in New York (1.7%) and Chicago (0.9%). Capacity is at 78% of pre-COVID levels (Chart 4), Dallas highest (82%), JFK lowest (73%). 
• European air traffic saw the largest gains on the week. Planned flights were up 1.93% and take-offs 2.64%. Departures increase at Gatwick (11.8%) with Half-Term holidays starting, Paris (7.2%) also gained; Milan led losses (0.9%). On capacity, Europe airport capacity increased 2pp to 68%, with Milan (86%) highest and Gatwick (46%) lowest. 
• Asian flights pulled back after two weeks of gains. Scheduled flights increased 0.83%, while departures dropped 3.94%. Beijing (11.6%) saw the largest drop. Shanghai came second (7.5%), whilst Seoul (2.9%) grew most. Overall, Asian capacity dropped 2pp WoW, standing at 65%. Shanghai remains top (86%), Singapore remains bottom (27%). 

Information on long-term movements in flight data is available at the bottom of the page. 

Information on long-term movements in flight data is available at the bottom of the page.

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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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