Prepare to Wait for Your Flight

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 15 August:

• Global flights are at 86% of 2019 levels, though the number of flights has stalled around 107k/day after having peaked five weeks ago (Chart 1). Historic seasonality would suggest flight numbers will continue to decrease.
• Asia’s impressive recovery, which outperformed the RoW through Q2, may be ending (Chart 2). Meanwhile, European flights have already seemingly topped, while they have seen a bounce in America.
• Shanghai (+15.0% WoW) led the way for the third week straight (Chart 4); it is still some way from returning to COVID-19 norms. Beijing (+1.1% WoW) is following a similar path up from its bottom. However, recent rising COVID-19 cases in the country may present a headwind.
• Elsewhere, travellers are heading for the complaints desk, not the sky; Heathrow Airport (-0.2% WoW) is extending its traveller cap. It means a maximum of 100,000 passengers can depart each day until 29 October. It was initially expected to be lifted on 11 September. Things are not much better in New York (+3.2% WoW) which is doing similar.
• For more information on recent changes in COVID cases, please see our weekend report.

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.)