Global capacity once again slipped back week on week as everyone settles down for three weeks of Olympian TV coverage and governments around the world once again stop travel, adjust their traffic lights and threaten further restrictions in the next few weeks. Despite increasing vaccination rates around the globe, booking travel remains a gamble for everyone. This week’s 81.6 million is 1.3% down on last week’s numbers and remains 31% below the same week two years ago; this is normally the busiest week of the year, read into that what you will.
Airlines remain as nervous about the next few weeks as an athlete on the starting line in Tokyo dropping another 2.6 million seats in the last seven days for July and to the end of October removing another 27.2 million seats; those are not the actions of an industry confident of a recovery. Between July and October 2019, the Transatlantic market alone generated revenues of some US$10.6 Billion, we will be lucky if one tenth of that is realised two years later. Since this is the time of year when airlines stash the cash for the winter season the lack of urgency in reopening this market must worry many major legacy airlines.
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