Report says number of available seats will continue to decline before turnaround >>
by: Harvey Chipkin
In the last seven days, more than 20 million scheduled seats were removed by airlines around the world, equating to a record 30% drop in capacity, according to OAG, the industry statisticians. The industry is now less than half the size reported in mid-January, as carriers in the US and India have worked through their recently announced changes. The 10 largest regional markets have all reduced capacity, with South Asia and the Southwest Pacific reporting a reduction in capacity of around 66% in a week. Europe saw some of the largest capacity cuts, and many more seats are expected to drop off as airlines make further announcements in the coming days. It took the airline industry some eight weeks for global capacity to fall from 106 million to 90 million; it took a further two weeks for that to fall to 49 million. OAG concluded that deeper cuts are still scheduled, which will get the number of weekly seats to 40 million, “a point from which we would hope to begin to see some signs of recovery occurring.”
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