Impact of Covid-19 on airline capacity

42 countries are now affected by the Covid-19 epidemic (the “SARS-CoV-2” virus). The impact on demand has changed significantly since mid-February, leading to massive cuts in the number of flights between Europe and China:

• The European “majors” Air France, KLM, British Airways and Lufthansa, and other airlines with a dense network to Asia such as Finnair, have decided to cancel their entire flight schedule to China for the coming weeks.
• Hong Kong is also affected, to a lesser extent: one flight in two is cancelled at Air France or British Airways, for example.

A “snapshot” of flight schedules to Asia on 24 February (source: OAG) shows that European airlines have not yet changed their schedules for the summer 2020 season, which starts at the end of March 2020.

This scenario of massive cancellations may well continue and soon apply to flights scheduled for April 2020.

In this context, it will be interesting to see whether airlines plan to ground part of their long-haul fleet or redeploy these resources to other regions.

If the epidemic were to last several months, the economic slowdown would affect all the world’s economies, which does not argue in favour of redeploying resources to other regions.

Our next weekly update will shed light on:

• Whether massive cancellations to Asia, and to China in particular, continue beyond the end of March, and
• Any schedule changes to other regions