Departures Decline as Summer Draws to an End

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 22 August:

• Global flights are at 85% of 2019 levels and are declining from their highs in line with historic seasonality (Chart 1).
• Asia’s impressive recovery appears to be stalling, particularly in Thailand (-0.4% WoW) and South Korea (-1.3% WoW; Charts 2 and 4). Departures from Beijing have also slowed, but it (along with Singapore) may see a second wind. Effective from 24 August, foreign APEC holders and foreign students with valid residence permits can enter China without applying for new visas. This could have a large effect as China is the third largest receiver of international students globally.
• Meanwhile, the downturn in departures continues in the US (-1.5% WoW) and Europe (-1.0% WoW). However, the picture may not deteriorate as fast as first expected in Europe. Both Heathrow and Gatwick had implemented a cap on the number of travellers, and while Heathrow (-0.3% WoW) chose to extend theirs until 29 October from 11 September, Gatwick (-2.6% WoW) has announced it will not extend its traveller cap beyond the end of August.
• For more information on recent changes in COVID cases, please see our weekend report.

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.

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