Global airline capacity is showing marginal growth for August 2009, the first month of positive growth for a year, reports OAG in its monthly report on trends in the supply of airline flights and seats. The world's airlines have 314.2 million seats on offer this month, a rise of 0.2 percent (472,839 more seats) over August 2008 levels.
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"After a year of capacity cutbacks, it is encouraging to see positive numbers in the year on year comparisons," said David Beckerman, vice president OAG Market Intelligence. "August is traditionally one of the busiest months for air travel, and it will be interesting to see if the steady upward trend we have seen since May continues once the summer vacation season draws to a close."
Frequencies remain down compared to August 2008, however. The world's airlines have scheduled a total of 2.53 million flights for August 2009, down by 2 percent (52,043 fewer flights) compared with the same month last year. Last month, the year on year global frequency figure was down by 3 percent and capacity was down by 1 percent.
The figures are revealed in the August 2009 edition of "OAG FACTS" (Frequency & Capacity Trend Statistics), the monthly market intelligence tool providing the latest data on current passenger airline activity around the world.
"OAG FACTS" uses interactive graphs to display a visual trend of the performance of a specific airport, route, country or region from 2001 onwards, sourced from OAG's consolidated database of global airline schedules. A more detailed review of this month's OAG FACTS statistics— including information about specific regions, routes and airports with illustrative charts and graphs— is available at www.oagaviation.com/aviation-reports/reports-facts-0809.htm.