Travel analytics company ForwardKeys has highlighted the debilitating impact of the Covid-19 crisis on the aviation industry.

During the week of 30 March to 5 April, international airline seat capacity fell to just 23% of what it was during the first week of April last year. Just 10 million seats were in service to facilitate essential travel, compared with 44.2 million in April 2019.

In the first quarter of 2020, airline capacity was 9.4% down compared with Q1 2019 (482 million seats were in service in Q1 2020, compared with 532 million in Q1 2019).

At the start of January, capacity was slightly up on last year, but it started to fall during the final week of the month, when the Chinese government announced outbound travel restrictions.

From then until the middle of March, air capacity fell substantially, at which point it dropped precipitously until the end of the month.

AIRLINE INDUSTRY CUTS SERVICES ‘TO THE BONE’

The top-10 airlines still operating in the first week of April, were KLM with 800,000 seats in service, Qatar Airways, with nearly 500,000 seats in service and Ryanair with 400,000.

These are followed in descending order by Delta Airlines, Air France, American Airlines, British Airways, Wizz Air, Cathay Pacific and Jeju Airlines.

KLM Royal Dutch Airlines had 800,000 seats in service during the first week commencing 30 March and ending 5 April, according to travel analytics company ForwardKeys.

This picture, however, will soon change with Ryanair grounding almost its entire fleet as a result of the Covid-19 outbreak.

Olivier Ponti, Vice Presdient Insights, ForwardKeys, said: “Governments have closed entire countries and in response, the airline industry has cut services to the bone. It is likely that when we get to the other side of the pandemic, things won’t return to the vibrant market conditions we had at the start of the year, anywhere near as easily as some people imagine.

“By then, it is possible that a number of airlines will have gone bust, consumers will have lost confidence in flying and uneconomic discounts will be necessary to attract demand back.”