Cirium: Carriers Fuel Optimism That USA Can Replicate China’s Rapid Restoration of Domestic Operations
18th March, 2021 - China and the USA are at the forefront of the global recovery in domestic passenger jet flights, together accounting for more than two thirds of the approximately 39,000 intra-country services operating daily as measured on a weekly rolling average basis.
While total flight numbers in the USA remain nearly 40% down compared with typical pre-pandemic levels, carriers have begun to report indications of an uptick in forward bookings amid widespread optimism over the impact of the nation’s accelerating mass vaccination program. US President Joe Biden said last week that all US adults would have the opportunity to receive a vaccine by early May.
American Airlines saw ticket sales begin to climb in late-February and “our last three weeks have been the best… since the pandemic hit”, CEO Doug Parker told a virtual JP Morgan investor conference on March 15. During the same event, Delta CEO Ed Bastian also reported a “very different trajectory” emerging for forward bookings, adding “we are getting really close to 2019 numbers”.
United reported improved customer demand in its March 15 investor update, while Southwest CEO Gary Kelly went as far as telling the Washington Post that “it feels like the beginning of the end” of the crisis.
US airports are meanwhile welcoming more than 1,000 international flight arrivals per day, but China is running at just a tenth of that level as cross-border travel restrictions in the Asia Pacific region heavily stifle demand. However, lack of progress with restoring international services has not prevented China’s airlines from hitting near pre-pandemic levels of overall daily flight activity following a sharp but short-lived downturn in the run-up to the Lunar New Year Holiday.
As of March 16 Cirium classified 32% of the global passenger jet fleet as in-storage, but for Chinese operators the figure is just over 8%, while for US airlines the figure is just below 29%.