Asia | China | Emerging Markets | Europe | Global | US
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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 2 January 2023:
- While global departures remain above 100,000, they are yet to recover to December highs and are 3% lower since our last report (Chart 1).
- A lot happened over Christmas. Most notably, China announced that it would manage Covid-19 as a Class B infectious disease as it changed the official name to the ‘novel coronavirus infection’. On the same day, they also announced that starting 8 January quarantine requirements on inbound travellers would be removed. They were not done there. A day later, China announced that it would resume foreign visa applications. Departures have soared higher over the past week (Beijing: +32.5% WoW; Shanghai: 20.4%; Chart 4).
- Hong Kong (-3.1% WoW) followed suit; they no longer require a Covid-19 test or vaccine pass upon arrival.
- As a result, several nations will require tougher Covid-19 measures on Chinese travellers. However, China have deemed that ‘some excessive measures are unacceptable’.
- US departures (+5.2% WoW) have driven higher following the Christmas break. Europe (+1.7% WoW) proved a laggard.
Information on long-term movements in flight data is available below.