European aviation bumps along the bottom ahead of a summer climb

EUROCONTROL DG Eamonn Brennan told CAPA Live on 10-Mar-20201 that Apr-2021 flight plans filed with the agency remained depressed.

However, plans from May-2021 suggest that European operations will pick up across the summer, led by short haul leisure. Long haul is likely to start with US-UK, given their advanced rates of vaccination.

For now, Europe’s capacity continues to lag the rest of the world, falling by 74.8% versus 2019 in the week of 15-Mar-2021, according to OAG schedules and CAPA seat configurations. Middle East is down by 56.3%, Africa is down by 54.5%, North America by 38.6%, Latin America by 48.7% and Asia Pacific by 32.2%.

Europe has been at approximately 25% of 2019 capacity for nine weeks. This is the lowest since operations restarted in early summer 2020, after the almost complete grounding of fleets in the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic.

OAG schedules currently imply 37% of 2019 seats in Apr-2021, rising to 80% in Jul-2021. In reality, the curve is likely to slope up less steeply than that, but European aviation activity is bumping along the bottom in anticipation of a summer climb.

Summary:

• Europe has 7.1 million seats vs 28.4 million in the same week of 2019, down 75%. It has fallen more deeply than all other regions for 21 successive weeks.
• EUROCONTROL does not see significant activity planned for Apr-2021, but flight plans are picking up across the summer.
• Feb-2021 and Mar-2021 flight numbers have beaten EUROCONTROL expectations, but are still at very low levels.
• European aviation can expect activity to climb through the summer.