Global airline capacity is down to 26.6 million seats this week despite capacity increases by carriers particularly in Northeast Asia and Western Europe, according to analysis by OAG.
While about 270 airlines have added some level of capacity back this week—about 3.9 million seats in total—more than 300 have cut capacity by a total of 5.6 million seats, including 1.8 seats of U.S. domestic capacity, OAG reported. More than a million of those came from Southwest Airlines alone, which for the past few weeks had been the airline with the largest capacity in the world but this week has been passed by China Eastern. This time last year, global airline capacity was about 109 million seats for the week.
Capacity growth this week is largest in Northeast Asia, up 6 percent compared with last week as China has eased some travel restrictions, OAG indicated. Western Europe capacity is up about 4 percent week over week with Italy, Germany and the United Kingdom all adding back some capacity, though Western Europe's total capacity remains at about a tenth of what it was in January. Vietnam, Oman and Colombia also have some capacity growth this week.