Dear Aviation ... YOU’RE GROUNDED
Oliver Smith take a closer look at the emptying of the skies
With much of the world under some form of lockdown, and all but a handful of countries imposing strict restrictions on overseas arrivals, things have never been more silent for the aviation industry. The travel analyst OAG, which tracks the number of available seats for every country and airline on the planet, says global air capacity has fallen to 37.8million seats — a 65% fall since the start of January.
No region has been spared, but it is Western Europe that has been hardest hit. In the week commencing January 20, 18.6million seats were offered on flights to and from its airports. Now that’s fallen by 87% to less than 2.5-million.
Dozens of airlines have grounded their entire fleets, including Ryanair, EasyJet, Turkish Airlines, Avianca, Thai AirAsia and Siberia Airlines. Others are offering just a few departures. IndiGo’s weekly capacity has fallen from 1.8-million to 632, and Emirates has cut seats from 1.5-million to 5,664. Even British Airways, which has sought to keep a fair chunk of its long-haul routes open, has reduced overall capacity from 1.1-million to 96,507.
US and Chinese airlines continue to serve domestic routes with considerable frequency, but remove them from the equation and the picture looks even more remarkable. The US “big four” airlines, for example (American, United, Delta and Southwest) now account for 26% of global air traffic, up from 15% in January. Southwest, whose main focus is domestic flying, has become the world’s biggest airline. Wizz Air, which is valiantly keeping Eastern Europe connected, comes in at number eight (just ahead of Air China).
A slowdown like this is completely unprecedented, and images from aviation tracking website FlightRadar24 reveal how the skies have been emptied.
The pictures on the right show the skies over Europe, both at the same time of day (noon) taken a month apart. The top picture was taken on March 14; the bottom this week, on April 14.
So which airlines are still flying?
As outlined above, BA and others do still have planes in the sky — though the number is diminishing. British Airways is ploughing on with a worldwide service, albeit mainly from London Heathrow, and with a reduced frequency. KLM is maintaining several of its links between Britain and Amsterdam. The closure of airports in the United Arab Emirates has largely limited the capacity of Emirates and Etihad to take off, but their regional competitor Qatar Airways is still in the air. Scottish carrier Loganair is carrying on with select business in and out of its hub Glasgow, and Wizz Air is shuttling back and forth to various runways in eastern Europe.
The situation in SA
In compliance with the rules under the national state of disaster, Fly Safair, Kulula and Mango airlines suspended all their flights from March 27 and plan on resuming flights once the lockdown is lifted.
South African Airways (SAA) likewise suspended all its domestic flights, but had already scaled back capacity in response to the low demand for air travel because of Covid-19. On March 17, it said in a statement that “in the light of the substantial fall in demand for air travel”, it had cancelled 162 flights between March 17 and 31. That was 38 international flights and 124 regional flights.
After the government imposed restrictions on the entry of citizens from high-risk countries, including those where SAA operates (the US, the UK and Germany), the airline on March 20 suspended all its intercontinental and African regional flights until May 31.
However, the airline has experienced increased demand for cargo flights to transport essential goods throughout the lockdown period.
SAA also agreed to provide charter flights to repatriate foreign nationals stuck in SA to their home countries. So far, it has flown German, Brazilian, Belgian and Canadian citizens home.
Well, there is an upside …
Environmentalists have got their wish. A 65% cut in air capacity (from 106.7-million seats to 37.8-million) translates to a global daily reduction of about 2-million tons of CO². When all those people last year were vowing not to fly, they had no idea how simple it would be.
— © Telegraph Media Group Limited [2020],