Worldwide, frequencies and capacity in the Low Cost sector are showing a marginal decline year on year for May 2009, with a 1% drop in flights and in seat capacity.

This is the tenth successive month of declines; however the rate of decline is showing signs of flattening, after a dramatic downturn in February this year. Global capacity reductions have remained at 3% for the last 3 months compared to figures for the same months in 2008.

Analysis by Region:
At a regional level, OAG statistics for May show the trends of recent months continuing. The only region with worsening figures compared to those reported last month is Asia Pacific, although the difference is slight. Seat capacity to and from the region is down by 2%, and within the region is up by 2%. Figures reported for Asia last month were a 1% decline to and from the region, and a rise of 3% for intra-regional capacity.

Figures for 2009 to date (January – May) shows a global decline of 6% in frequencies and 4% in capacity compared to the first five months of 2008.  North America is showing a 10% downturn in the volume of flights within the region with a 9% drop in the number of seats.  Figures for flight services within Europe are down by 8% with 7% fewer seats, while Asia has a marginal 0.3% downturn in the number of flights within the region and a 2% increase in year-to-date capacity compared to 2008.  Airline activity within the Middle East shows healthy growth in frequencies and capacity of 9% and 7% respectively.

Analysis by Country – Highlights:
The UK continues to experience significant cutbacks, especially on domestic services. Airline frequencies and capacity within the UK are down year on year by 14% and 15% respectively, representing a drop of 5,675 flights and 537,000 seats for the month.

Airline services in the U.S. are down by 76,000 flights (-9%) with 6.5 million fewer seats on offer (-8%). International service is down year on year by 5.5% for frequencies and 5% for capacity (6,425 fewer flights and 1,008,000 fewer seats).

Analysis by Airport – Highlights:
The airport with the highest capacity cut for May 2009 compared to May 2008 is Chicago O'Hare, with a downturn of 880,400 seats (down by 11%).  When the figures are analysed by volume of cutbacks in scheduled service operations, Chicago O'Hare again has the largest decline with 7,872 fewer flights (down by 10%).

Analysis by Major Routes
On the key long-haul routes, the OAG figures for May show continued growth between Western Europe and the Middle East, and between Western Europe and Africa, with upturns in capacity of 13% (347,000 more seats) and 5% (201,000 more seats) respectively compared with May 2008.  The transpacific routes, however, show a year on year capacity decline of 10%, representing 324,000 fewer seats, while there will be 578,000 fewer seats on offer on transatlantic routes this month, a drop of 8%.

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OAG FACTS enables you to see trends at-a-glance. An easy to use tool providing the latest data on current airline activity around the world. Updated monthly, it uses interactive graphs to display a visual trend of the performance of a specific airport, route, country or region from 2001 - 2009.