Global Flight Departures Rise into Winter Holidays

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 5 December 2022:

• Global daily departures are up 1.5% WoW but stalled south of 100,000. They could fall past 95,000, according to historic seasonality (Chart 1).
• Major cities across China have eased Covid-19 testing rules. Shanghai was the latest to join Beijing, Shenzhen and Guangzhou and several other cities. Most will not require PCR results for access to public transit and other shared areas. However, cases continue to surge; there were more than 40,000 high-risk areas on 4 December. As a result, departures have continued to slide lower (Beijing: ‑9.8% WoW; Shanghai: -12.9% WoW). Elsewhere in Asia, flights are yet to moderate (+3.1% WoW). Caroline considered the impact of a late reopening for Thailand in a recent EM Under the Spotlight.
• US (+4.2% WoW) and European (+1.4% WoW) departures are finding renewed strength into Christmas.

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.)