Despite a drop of 1.1 million seats in the week, the total aviation capacity around the world last week stood at 108.3 million seats, a gain of 1.1 pc over the corresponding period of 2019, says report by OAG.

The global aviation industry has certainly recovered from the Covid-19 pandemic crisis as the total seat capacity stands a fair distance above the pre-pandemic peaks now. According to the latest weekly update provided by aviation data aggregator and analysis firm OAG, says that in the week beginning October 23, the last week of the IATA Summer Season, the global aviation capacity dropped by 1.1 million seats to 108.3 million seats.

However, despite the drop, the global capacity is 1.1 pc more than the corresponding week in 2019, the peak year so far for the global aviation industry.

OAG says that based on the current forward schedule for the rest of 2023, global capacity for 2023 is expected to be just 3.5 pc behind the full year in 2019.

Over the entire summer of 2023, the total global capacity was 0.4 pc more than the summer of 2019, translating into 13.3 million additional seats this year, says OAG.

OAG says that domestic airline capacity continued to reduce this week, although the rate appeared to be slowing.  There are 65.4 million domestic seats in the schedule, down just 0.6 pc on last week and given the difference in winter season days of the week, this week domestic capacity is up 1.5 pc on the same week in 2019.

Looking back at the summer season for 2023 shows that capacity this summer was 4.9 pc more than that in summer of 2019.

OAG says that the international capacity continued to fall, in line with seasonal norms, this week down 0.65 million seats to 42.9 million which is a drop of 3.7 pc on the previous week.

In terms of international capacity this summer, there was a shortfall of 5.8 pc compared to the 2019 summer levels.

OAG says that last week saw a fairly stable position in domestic capacity across the regions, with the exception of North America where there are 356,000 less seats this week than last week, a reduction of 1.7 pc on last week. There are also seasonal reductions in Europe with carriers taking 99,000 seats out of the schedule this week.

OAG says that the reductions in Europe are larger on international capacity, with almost 0.5 million seats taken out this week.  There are also further reductions this week in the Middle East, totally 152,000 fewer international seats, with 107,000 of those coming out of Israel’s international weekly capacity.