Air travel rising again in Europe after a depressing January

Global airline seat capacity rose for the first week so far this year, potentially ending a malaise that kept aviation fuel demand subdued in January as one country after another endured waves of coronavirus infections. The return of some previously closed domestic capacity in China has helped raise the figure, and globally, airlines offered almost 79m seats on planes for the week commencing Feb. 7, according to OAG Aviation. That’s about one quarter less than the equivalent week of 2019. Most of that deficit is due to international travel, which is only at about half normal strength globally, while domestic travel trails 2019 levels by about 11%. The worst hit regions for international travel remain northeast and southeast Asia, including places such as Hong Kong, while domestic capacity is most reduced in the southwest Pacific, southern Africa and western Europe.<br/>Jet fuel has been the weakest link in the oil market through the pandemic, with air travel always the first victim of any kind of lockdown or movement restriction. In its most recent monthly report, the International Energy Agency saw the omicron variant slowing the recovery in Europe’s aviation fuel consumption this quarter, but expected growth to gather pace in the second and return to close to the five-year average in the remainder of the year. European flight data is showing early signs of its deficit to 2019 starting to narrow. Arrival and departure numbers for 41 nations in the European network area sank from about 22,700 a couple of days before Christmas to as little as about 13,800 on Jan. 25 and were back up to about 18,000 on Sunday, according to government-funded Eurocontrol. When a rolling average of the flight numbers is compared against the same period of 2019, the Eurocontrol data translates into a tumbling decline through January and the start of a gentle recovery in February.<br/>