Europe’s spring 2024 seat capacity is still 2.2pc lower than it was in the same period in 2019, with significant differences among the top country markets.
Ryanair is now nearly twice as big as its nearest competitor, Turkish Airlines, with a 13pc share of all European seats. Wizz Air has risen from tenth to fourth place in just five years. EasyJet is still 9pc smaller than it was in 2019, while Norwegian and Eurowings are both 45pc smaller.
Data from Cirium schedules for the first three months of 2024 show Ryanair and Wizz Air have added the most seats in Europe over the past five years, followed by other low-cost carriers, leisure airlines, and flag carriers.
Among the top 20 European countries, Finland, Germany, and Sweden still have more than 20pc lower capacity compared to pre-pandemic levels. Greece, Portugal, and Romania are expected to see capacity growth of over 15pc.
In terms of changes in rankings, Germany has slipped from second to fourth, overtaken by Spain and Türkiye. Italy and France have also swapped places. Heathrow is just ahead of Istanbul for total seats, followed by Paris CDG, Amsterdam, Frankfurt and Madrid. Back in 2019 Frankfurt had ranked second.
Among the top 20 fastest-growing airports, five are in Spain, three in Türkiye, and three in Russia. Istanbul’s airports rank in the top four, showcasing their advantageous geographic location.
Moscow SVO and Berlin are among the bottom 10 airports in terms of capacity drop, followed by Munich, Kiev KBP, Düsseldorf, Frankfurt FRA, Stockholm ARN, Oslo OSL, Helsinki, and Moscow DME.
Airlines which existed in early 2019 which have now ceased operations incldue Flybe (despite a brief revival), Blue Air, Thomas Cook Airlines, Air Italy, Blue Panorama, WOW air, Onur Air, Air Adria, Aigle Azur and Ernest Airlines.
Airlines that were not around in 2019 include Aeroitalia, Discover Airlines, Iceland’s PLAY, Norse Atlantic, Air Albania, Dan Air (of Romania) and Air Connect. In addition, some existing non-European carriers have started flying to Europe. These include American carrier JetBlue, India’s Vistara, China’s Juneyao Airlines, Oman’s Salam Air and Vietnam’s Bamboo Airlines. The biggest carrier to emerge and then fail between 2019 and 2024 was probably Norway’s Flyr which operated from June 2021 until the end of January 2023.
The biggest airport to have lost commercial services is Doncaster/Sheffield in England, which had its last commercial flight in early November 2022. There are on-going attempts to re-open the airport.
