The clocks in Europe jumped forward by one hour on Sunday morning, heralding the start of the airline planner’s seven month “summer” season. Here at anna.aero, it means an increased workload as the number of new routes launched jumped from under 20 last week, to 160 this week. A key reason for this is that many European airports are slot-controlled and airlines risk losing the slots if they don’t operate them for the majority of a season. Also, at least in in the northern hemisphere, the change in the clocks coincides with a gradual improvement in the weather, and an increasing number of daylight hours, both of which encourage passengers to consider more leisure travel options.
Our database of new routes (which is added to on a daily basis) currently holds information on over 800 new routes that airlines plan to start between now and the end of June. This is likely to rise to over 900 by the time we actually get to the end of June. Almost 500 routes are scheduled to start between this week and the end of April, a further 150 in May, and almost 200 in June.
Ryanair leads way with over 100 new routes
New routes from almost 200 different airlines have been identified, but the runaway leader with most new routes (once again) is Ryanair, with well over 100 new airport-pairs starting in the next three months. However, the average frequency of these new routes is just 2.5 flights per week. By our calculations, the only other airlines starting more than 20 new routes during this period are Wizz Air, Jet2.com, airberlin and Norwegian. This proves that while the European market is not growing that quickly overall, its low-cost airlines are still busy launching new services, even if they are at ever lower weekly frequencies.
US leads country markets with most new routes
Examining the new routes by country market reveals that airports in the US will welcome over 250 new routes in the next three months, more than any other country. Many of these are domestic routes that are counted twice, once for each airport. Using the same methodology reveals that Spain, UK, Germany and Italy round out the top five of country markets whose airports will see the biggest increase in new routes.
Asian airports see biggest year-on-year growth in seat capacity
Comparing OAG schedule data for this April with last April reveals that airports across Asia have seen the largest increase in weekly departing seat capacity (up 10.5%), while the Middle East’s airports see a gain of 8.3%. Latin America also sees growth of more than 5%, while the remaining regions (Africa, Australasia, Europe and North America) see year-on-year capacity growth of between 2% and 3%.
| Region | Weekly departing seats w/c 12 April 2010 | Weekly departing seats w/c 4 April 2011 | Change between April 2011 and April 2010 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Africa | 2,290,942 | 2,341,397 | +2.2% |
| Asia | 19,081,640 | 21,076,655 | +10.5% |
| Australasia | 2,260,447 | 2,312,904 | +2.3% |
| Europe | 18,877,128 | 19,366,028 | +2.6% |
| Latin America | 5,973,513 | 6,348,944 | +6.3% |
| Middle East | 2,776,352 | 3,006,343 | +8.3% |
| North America | 19,156,440 | 19,757,458 | +3.1% |
| Source: OAG Max Online for w/c 12 April 2010 and w/c 4 April 2011 | |||
Source: anna
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