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Germany’s recovery in airline seat capacity is continuing to lag its major European competitors at the start of 2023, according to the latest data from aviation analyst OAG.
The total number of scheduled airline seats from Germany adds up to 1.85 million during the first week of January, which is still down by 27 per cent on January 2020’s capacity. This is despite a 9.9 per cent week-on-week increase in Germany’s capacity compared with the final week of 2022.
OAG’s chief analyst John Grant said that much of Germany’s slow rebound from the pandemic was “based around Lufthansa’s capacity still being some 413,000 seats a week lower than three years ago”.
The UK remains Europe’s largest aviation market with capacity of 2.7 million seats in the first week of January, which is only 4.3 per cent lower than during the same week in 2020. Spain is the continent’s second largest market with 2.6 million seats, which is 7.8 per cent higher than the same week in 2020.
Italy is another market that has seen airline capacity virtually return to pre-Covid levels during the first week of this year, with its 1.9 million seats being just 0.7 per cent lower than in January 2020.
In France, capacity has reached 1.85 million seats this week, which is 4.4 per cent lower than the comparable week three years ago.
The only major European country to perform worse than Germany in terms of recovery is Russia which is still 28 per cent down on January 2020 capacity. Although this is mainly down to the closure of airspace between the EU and Russia following the outbreak of the war in Ukraine in February 2022.
OAG’s figures also highlight how low-cost carriers have continued to recover much faster than their legacy competitors – seat capacity in early January 2023 for Wizz Air and Ryanair has risen by 47 per cent and 16 per cent respectively compared with the immediate pre-Covid period.
Another major budget carrier easyJet is also offering one per cent more seats this week than during the same period in 2020.
Among legacy carriers, Turkish Airlines is one of the standout performers with its capacity of 1.8 million seats this week being more than 10 per cent higher than in 2020.
Grant said that the gap between budget and legacy carriers in terms of growth would “inevitably widen further by this time next year” as LCCs take delivery of more aircraft in 2023.
“Finding a legacy airline short-haul service will become increasingly difficult in some markets as the low-cost carrier momentum continues,” he added.
The dominance of budget carriers on European short-haul routes is further emphasised by the fact that both Wizz Air and Ryanair doubled their passenger numbers in 2022 compared with 2021.
Ryanair carried 160.4 million passengers last year, up by 121 per cent on 2021 and also above 2019’s traffic figure of 152.4 million.
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