Visiting China? There’s A 10-Day Wait…

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 20 June, we find the following: 

• Global flights are at 85% of 2019 levels, sitting above 100k flights a day after breaking that level for the first time since the pandemic last week.
• Numerous temporary setbacks are disrupting China’s reopening. Areas which have seen no cases in a while are enjoying less stringent COVID-19 requirements, while at least eight cities have cut quarantine times for international arrivals to 10 days. Meanwhile, China resumed family visit visas (S2 or Q2) for select countries. But where there have been recent outbreaks, public transport has been suspended and city-wide testing enforced. Turning to the data, departures are returning to normal much faster in Shanghai (+11.2% WoW) than Beijing (+3.2% WoW) (Chart 3).
• In Europe, Estonia, Finland, and Germany eased COVID-19 travel restrictions ahead of a busy summer in Europe – 71% of Europeans reportedly plan to travel. It will be the first real test for European airports since the pandemic struck; they’re running at 93% of pre-COVID levels (Chart 4).
• In the US, cases are slowing and departures are increasing less than two weeks after the US dropped negative test requirements for foreign visitors. Compared to pre-COVID levels, New York (94%) and Dallas (92%) are closest, while Atlanta (75%) and Chicago (77%) remain the laggards.
• For more information on recent changes in COVID cases, please see our weekend report by Dominique and Henry.

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

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.)