OAG says that the region seeing the highest percentage growth is Central Asia with capacity increasing by 17.4 pc, equivalent to an increase of 338,594 seats
The number of one-way flights in the schedule from January 1 to April 21 stood at 10.76 million, making an average of 96,068 commercial flights per day, says a weekly update by OAG, a leading aviation industry tracking and analysis firm.
In a press statement, OAG says that in terms of seats, the global airline capacity will reach 483.9 million by April-end, an increase of 7.8 pc on the same month in 2023, which equates to 35 million more seats.
OAG adds that every region of the world is growing this month compared to the same month in 2023 apart from Central America and Central and Western Africa where capacity has dropped by 0.7 pc and by 2.5 pc respectively.
It says that the region seeing the highest percentage growth is Central Asia with capacity increasing by 17.4 pc, equivalent to an increase of 338,594 seats. The regions showing strong volume growth are Western Europe where capacity is up by 8.3 million seats, equivalent to a 9 pc increase, and North East Asia where capacity is up by 7.5 million seats, equivalent to a 7.6 pc increase.
OAG says that the three US legacy carriers of American Airlines (AA), Delta Air Lines (DL) and United Airlines (UA) remain the three largest carriers in the world in terms of frequencies this month. All three of these carriers are adding frequency year on year, with American Airlines, the largest carrier in the world, rising by 9.2 pc, Delta by 3.9 pc and United 3.8 pc.
In terms of the top carriers with the highest percentage growth rates this month, the top carrier is Azul Airlines up 11.6 pc on April 2023, followed by IndiGo and Ryanair with frequency growth of 11 pc and 10 pc respectively.
There are three carriers in the Top 20 airlines by frequency which have seen a decrease in frequency in April 2024 compared to April 2023, Turkish Airline has seen the biggest decrease with a drop of 20.7 pc followed by JetBlue, down 10.8 pc and All Nippon Airways, down 2.4 pc.
The statement adds that the United States remains the largest domestic market in the world this month, by a considerable margin of 16.9 million more seats than second placed China. The US domestic market is up 4.3 pc on last April with 86.1 million seats.
It says that on the other hand, China’s domestic market growth has slowed, this month up 1.4 pc compared to growth of 7.8 pc in March 2024. The domestic market with the highest percentage growth compared to last year is Indonesia which is up 21.9 pc or 1.84 million seats.
The domestic markets declining this month compared to April 2023 are Mexico, which is down 7.9 pc on April 2023, and Japan, which is down 2.1 pc on April 2023.
