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We track scheduled flights (what’s planned) and tracked flights (what’s in the air). Looking at data up to 26 July we find the following:
- Flight growth has stagnated for the majority of airports in our sample. Excluding London Gatwick, whose tracked and scheduled flight departures expanded by 30 and 32 respectively, flight departures increased, on average, by just 2.5% across all airports listed below (Charts 1 & 2).
- Tracked flights in the US and Hong Kong are down WoW, as both countries try to contain increasing COVID cases. Hong Kong has some of the strictest lockdowns measures currently in place. Yesterday, the country banned gatherings of more than two people and last week it announced new COVID-19 testing rules for passengers arriving for high-risk countries.
- Scheduled flights from Madrid have fallen the most, following news that the UK and some European countries have imposed quarantine measures on passengers arriving from Spain. This comes after the country had seen a steady rise in flights since the end of June (see Spain charts).
- Finally, scheduled and tracked flights out of Tokyo have risen over the last week. Haneda International Airport, the larger of the two, is currently running at 70% of its pre-state-of-emergency capacity (Chart 3). Across all selected airports, capacity averaged 44% of late February levels.
Information on long term movements in flight data is available at the bottom of the page. To see how flight data has changed with COVID developments, see our COVID-19 Tracker.
Charts 1 & 2: Change vs One Week Before in Scheduled and Tracked Flights
Chart 3: Number of Tracked Flights vs Highest Daily Number of Tracked Flights Since 1 March
United States
UK
Italy
Spain
Germany
France
Canada
China
Japan
Hong Kong
South Korea
Singapore
Bilal Hafeez is the CEO and Editor of 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.
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