OAG says that global capacity will reach 459.5 million in January 2024
The United States of America remains the largest domestic aviation market in the world in January, with about 10 million more seats than the second largest market, China, says the latest analysis by global aviation tracking and analyst firm, OAG.
In its weekly analysis, OAG says that while the USA domestic market is fairly flat though with just 1.6 pc growth recorded through the month of January, compared to January 2023, the Chinese domestic market continues to see growth, up 7.7 pc on January 2023.
OAG adds that interestingly the focus on growth amongst the world’s biggest domestic markets this month is to the East, with Indonesia and Australia recording growth of 9.1 pc and 7.2 pc on January 2023, whilst on the other side of Pacific, Mexico and Brazil’s domestic markets are slowing down year on year with 10.0 pc and 4.2 pc fewer seats respectively.
OAG says that global capacity will reach 459.5 million in January 2024, an increase of 8.5 pc on December 2023. It says that almost every region of the world is growing this month compared to last month, with the exception of Central/Western Africa where capacity is down by 10.1 pc year on year. This is largely due to the impact of ongoing instability in some countries in the region and some domestic capacity reductions in Nigeria.
It says that regions seeing most growth are North East Asia, up by 16 million seats on January 2023, equivalent to a 17.3 pc increase, Western Europe, where capacity is up 5 million seats, equivalent to a 6.8 pc increase, and there is strong growth across most of the rest of Africa where growth is into double digits compared to January 2023.
OAG says that from January 1-28, the number of flights scheduled stood at 2.62 million, an average of 93,486 scheduled commercial flights daily. It adds that with 170,623 flights, American Airlines has the most flights in January 2024.
On an average, the Top 20 largest airlines in the world are growing at nearly 5 pc this month compared to January 2023, but this masks some regional variations. Eight of the Top 20 are based in North America, and there are mixed results. Legacy carriers such as American Airlines and United Airlines are adding frequency year on year, by 6.5 pc and 4.6 pc respectively, but some others, notably JetBlue and Spirit Airlines are pulling back, down by 9.2 pc and 5.4 pc on last January, it says.
In Asia, China’s major airlines continue to record strong growth, averaging 20.1 pc more flights than a year ago, whilst India’s largest airline, the low-cost carrier IndiGo too has recorded a strong growth in frequency, up 11.3 pc on January 2023.
In terms of country pairs, OAG says that Mexico-USA remains the largest international country pair this month, and continues to record strong year on year growth, with seats now 15.9 pc higher this month than in January 2023.
There are 3 other country markets to and from the USA in the Top 20 this month, including Canada, second largest country pair globally, the UK, which is 6th largest and Puerto Rico, the 17th largest.
OAG adds that as China outbound continues to recover, it is starting to see China country pairs return to the Top 20 global list, with China-Japan, South Korea, Thailand and Hong Kong all back in the ranking this month.
