After the sixth week of monitoring global airline capacities, we see the scheduled total seats continuing to decline. Airlines are still grounding aircraft and the global capacity is being cut each week.

We analysed the data from the ch-aviation capacities module.

The world’s scheduled capacity is now smaller than one-third the size it was expected before COVID-19 crisis. We see the large drop of scheduled capacity for the first week of May as most airlines understand now that traffic will not return after the symbolic date of May 1.

But for the second week in a row, we do not see any more capacity cut in Asia for the month of May. The capacity may even be slightly increased in terms of seats scheduled to depart Asia.

We looked more what’s causing this optimism and the answer is clear: China‘s domestic market. Airlines further increased the number of seats scheduled in China and now in May airlines have more than 14 million domestic seats scheduled domestically.

After being the first country hit by COVID-19, it looks like China is now on a very strong, fast-paced road to the recovery.

Our grounded fleets analysis in the ch-aviaton fleets advanced module also shows China is the country with the smallest percentage of grounded aircraft — 25% of aircraft are now grounded in China, while the world‘s average is 58%.

The airlines in North America have no optimism for any recovery in May.

Airlines in Europe are still more optimistic with the traffic return during the second part of May.

Airlines in South America have even more optimism than European airlines with the possible traffic recovery in May. But all the plans are subject to change these days.

Africa is still a larger market than South America these days.

The most pessimistic region remains Oceania, where airlines have almost zero expectations of any traffic recovery in the month of May.

We will continue to monitor the situation on capacities and will post on our blog. Follow us here and follow our #chaviationcovid19updates on Linkedin.