by John Grant
Coronavirus Capacity Update Week Forty-Eight: Second guessing global capacity has been difficult this year and the last few weeks have seen us settled at around 55 million seats a week although with numerous fluctuations in regional markets. So quite how in the last full week before the year-end holidays we have a near 9% increase in capacity and some 4.8 million seats week on week; maybe there is a Father Christmas after all!
This week’s capacity levels are the highest since the week of the 3rd August when the sun shone, airlines were adding capacity back at a rapid rate and much of the globe seemed to have worked its way through the first wave of the pandemic. Quite what we can make of the increased capacity we can see this week and much more importantly the anticipated demand is anyone’s guess. Current capacity filed for next week suggests a week of over 62.5 million; could we really hit such giddy heights?