Is the US Aviation Market In Recovery? Airlines Experiment with New Network Strategies
Domestic airline capacity, and TSA volumes, a proxy for flight demand have increased significantly in the last few months and forward-looking airline capacity data is extremely positive; exciting times (at last) but what can we read in the schedules data and looking forward what is all of this likely to mean in the coming years.
We’ve had a look at some key data points.In January 2020, surrounded by uncertainty, limited confidence in vaccine roll out programmes and Covid-19 infection rates, US airlines were naturally cautious but equally thinking positively about the first half of the year. In truth, the first quarter of 2021 was a damp squib, the second quarter looks a bit soft but better than Q1 with increasing confidence about the second half of the year. At the beginning of the year, some 449 million domestic airline seats were scheduled for the first half of the year; today that stands at 348 million, a near one-quarter “shaving” off airline capacity. What could that mean for the second half of 2021?
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