Departures Begin to Slow in Europe and the US

We track scheduled flights (what’s planned) and tracked flights (what took off) from a sample of the largest airports across the world.

Looking at data up to 3 October:

• Global departures have relinquished last week’s gain (-2.1% WoW), resuming the five-week decline that ended the summer (Chart 1).
• Asian departures (+4.4% WoW) continued to climb following a Golden Week kickstart on 1-7 October (Chart 2). The benefit was, again, most noticeable in Shanghai (+26.6% WoW), with Beijing (+1.8% WoW) also benefitting. However, it is not all good news; on Covid, the number of medium- and high-risk areas has stalled. They could easily increase, despite reiterated efforts to contain the virus through the holiday.
• Departures dropped across Europe (-1.4% WoW) and the US (-2.4% WoW). It may be the start of a meaningful reduction in international travel (Chart 2).

Information on long-term movements in flight data is available below.

US

UK

Italy

Spain

Germany

France

Canada

China

Japan

Hong Kong

South Korea

Singapore

Thailand

Bilal Hafeez is the CEO and Head of Research at Macro Hive. He spent over twenty years doing research at big banks – JPMorgan, Deutsche Bank, and Nomura, where he had various “Global Head” roles and did FX, rates and cross-markets research.

Ben Ford is a Researcher at Macro Hive. Ben studied BSc Financial Mathematics at Cardiff University and MSc Finance at Cass Business School, his dissertations were on the tails of GARCH volatility models, and foreign exchange investment strategies during crises, respectively.

(The commentary contained in the above article does not constitute an offer or a solicitation, or a recommendation to implement or liquidate an investment or to carry out any other transaction. It should not be used as a basis for any investment decision or other decision. Any investment decision should be based on appropriate professional advice specific to your needs.)