With peak summer travel season already on, airlines have been ramping up global aviation capacity, taking domestic capacity to record highs, well above 2019 peaks, says data by aviation data consultancy OAG.

The growth of global aviation industry continues, even if at varying pace, with domestic airline capacity breaching new records, while the international capacity continues to linger below the peaks last attained in 2019, says aviation data aggregator and consultancy firm OAG.

In its weekly analysis, OAG says that overall the global capacity continues to move upwards again this week, with carriers adding 1.5 million seats which takes the weekly total up to 115.8 million seats. This is only marginally below the performance in the same week in 2019.

OAG says that according to the latest schedules data, capacity will continue to rise for the next 4 weeks, before starting to fall in line with normal seasonal trends in mid August. The peak is expected to be just 1.4 pc below the same week in 2019.

OAG says that there are different patterns in recovery for the domestic and international markets. It adds that domestic airline capacity has moved upwards again this week for the first time in a couple of weeks.  Domestic capacity globally is 69.6 million seats this week which is the highest domestic capacity has ever been, and is 1.6 pc higher than the same week in 2019.

It adds that domestic seats are expected to peak for the year in 4 weeks’ time at 70.2 million seats, which is significantly higher than the previous all-time high of 67.5 million in 2019, translating into a healthy 4 pc growth.

OAG says that having risen steadily for a number of weeks, international capacity growth has slowed down this week, with carriers adding just 116,000 seats on international routes. It says that the international capacity has reached 46.2 million seats this week, which is still 8.2 pc below 2019.

However, the forward looking schedule still shows that there is growth expected in the coming weeks with capacity expected to reach 46.9 million seats. The 2019 peak week for international capacity reached 50.8 million weekly seats, so 2023 will remain behind on international seats, it says.

As a region, North Africa records highest weekly growth of 5.2 pc in domestic seat capacity, followed by North America at 4.8 pc and Central America at 3.2 pc. Middle East was worst performer with a decline of 1.7 pc in domestic capacity, followed closely by Western Europe and Central Asia with declines of 1.3 pc each.

In international capacity, the Caribbean leads the globe with a 2 pc growth in capacity, while Central/Western Africa lead the declines with a 1.2 pc fall in international seat capacity, which registers 0.3 pc growth globally.