Global airline capacity for September is showing positive growth for the second consecutive month, new statistics show.
Leading aviation data business OAG’s monthly report on trends in the supply of flights and seats shows the world’s airlines have scheduled 296.9 million seats, a rise of 1.4% (4,130,744 more seats) over September 2008 levels.
Frequencies are marginally down compared to September last year.
Airlines have scheduled a total of 2.4 million flights for this month, down by 0.6% (14,321 fewer flights) compared with the same time last year.
The year on year global frequency figure last month was down by 2% and capacity was up by 0.2%.
OAG Market Intelligence vice president David Beckerman said: “As the summer season winds down, the steady upward trend we have seen since May is continuing.
“After 11 straight months of capacity cutbacks, these figures indicate a growing confidence within the industry that demand for air travel is starting to pick up.”
The month by month trend since the start of the economic downturn can be seen in chart format at http://www.oagaviation.com/trends-chart-sep.jpg.
by Phil Davies
