Cleared for takeoff: Global airlines plan to add more flights

Airlines from the United States to Australia are ramping up flights in June and July, boosting hopes for a pickup in tourist traffic even as bigger-spending business and global travel remain sluggish during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

American Airlines and United Airlines each announced more flights to key US business and leisure destinations where national parks and outdoor recreational spaces are reopening after months of lockdowns and travel curbs, sending their shares sharply higher.

American Airlines said it plans to increase flights by 74 percent in July compared to this month. 

The busiest days next month will have about 4,000 flights, up from 2,300 in June, said Vasu Raja, American’s senior vice president of network strategy. The July figure is equivalent to 40 percent of capacity a year earlier, compared with 30 percent in June, the airline said on Thursday. Capacity was even less in May, after a devastating collapse in flying spurred by the coronavirus pandemic.

“People are hungry, eager to get back into the economy,” Raja told the Bloomberg news agency. “We feel a real confidence to fly a much bigger July.”

Chicago-based United is adding more non-stop flights as well as servicing markets like Aspen, Colorado and Jackson Hole, Wyoming where it said “social distancing is a natural feature” in the scenic landscapes.

“Leisure travel has been the most missed activity during lockdown across age and income demographics, even more so than things like restaurants,” Jason Guggenheim of Boston Consulting Group, which has surveyed consumers in the US and Europe, told the Reuters news agency.

“But it’s going to take business travel longer to come back,” he said, noting work-from-home models will remain in place for some time.

Even with the scheduled increases, analysts expect overall US airline capacity will remain drastically lower this year compared to 2019; and without business travel, yields will likely remain negative, they said. Yield is the revenue an airline makes per mile flown and a measure of profitability.

Australia’s Qantas Airways Ltd and Air New Zealand Ltd outlined plans on Thursday for significant boosts to domestic capacity, while Emirates and Etihad Airways are restarting transit flights through hub airports in Abu Dhabi and Dubai.

In Europe, Iberia – part of the International Consolidated Airlines Group – told customers on Thursday that it is starting a schedule of regular flights from Spain in July as a first step towards building back a full service.