GLOBAL AIRLINE CAPACITY CONTINUES TO STABILISE, REPORTS OAG, AS JULY FIGURES ARE RELEASED

One year on since the world’s airlines began to curb their seat capacity in the face of global economic pressures, the cutbacks are starting to stabilise with just over 315 million seats on offer this month, a drop of just one percent over July 2008 levels, reports OAG, (www.oagaviation.com), the world’s leading aviation data business, as it releases its monthly report on trends in the supply of airline flights and seats.

David Beckerman, vice president OAG Market Intelligence, said, “Airline capacity is often cited as a barometer of economic confidence. Carriers adjust their fleet and services in anticipation of market demand for air travel, which is vulnerable to corporate cost management and to disposable income of leisure travellers at times of financial uncertainty.

“The OAG figures, which amalgamate the planned operations for airlines worldwide, show a clear and very welcome upward trend from the dramatic declines we have seen in recent months. We can only wait and see if this outlook bears financial fruit in actual passenger numbers and airline load factors.”

The world’s airlines have scheduled a total of 2.55 million flights for July 2009, down by 3% compared with the same month last year, with a drop in capacity of 3.3 million fewer seats on offer to travelers around the globe. Last month, the year-on-year global frequency and capacity figures were down by 4% and 2% respectively.

A chart showing the month-by-month trend since the start of the economic downturn can be seen above.

The figures are revealed in the July 2009 edition of OAG FACTS (Freqency & Capacity Trend Statistics ), the dynamic monthly market intelligence tool providing the latest data on current passenger airline activity around the world.

OAG FACTS uses interactive graphs to display a visual trend of the performance of a specific airport, route, country or region from 2001 onwards, sourced from OAG’s consolidated database of global airline schedules. 

OAG is a UBM Aviation business (www.ubmaviation.com). It provides essential aviation workflow data and analytics sourced from its comprehensive proprietary airline schedules, fleet and MRO databases. UBM Aviation is a division of United Business Media Limited (www.unitedbusinessmedia.com)

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