This week’s airline capacity numbers look pretty similar to last week’s (which in turn were like the previous weeks) and it seemed that we had perhaps peaked at around 102 million seats a week. However, then China reported another lockdown, this time in Hainan, where most areas have been locked down today in response to a domestic COVID-19 outbreak. The impact of the latest lockdown is not reflected in this week’s numbers, but we should expect to see at least a million seats removed next week as the two major airports are impacted.

So, 102.5 million seats this week, some 200,000 more than the same week last year – although with some airlines in Europe not able to sell more seats on some services, the true number of commercially available seats may be slightly less. Still, a 35% increase on last year’s figure is very welcome and we are now less than 14% below the pre-pandemic levels.