Flight Friday: Charting The Recovery In APAC

Credit: AirAsia

This week’s Flight Friday looks at the return of Asia-Pacific region operators (excluding China and India) to pre-pandemic levels of utilization.

Asia-Pacific has been well-documented as a region that has taken a little longer than others to return to a 2019 level. The “lag” within the market, in part, has been heavily influenced by the effect that China has on the region as a whole.

In a similar pattern to other parts of the world, the regional aircraft were the first to pick up flights, as a more localized travel pattern developed. By early 2021 both regional jets and turboprops had returned to equivalent 2019 flights. Regional aircraft, especially turboprops, have begun to thrive within the region, and are at levels 20% higher than the equivalent month in 2019.

Narrowbody and widebody aircraft have taken longer to return to 2019 equivalent levels, however. February 2024 was the first time that both aircraft classes returned to 2019 levels (possibly helped in part due to the “leap day” in 2024). The other significant shift in utilization occurred after China abolished its zero-COVID policy at the end of 2022. Narrowbodies saw a rise in almost 10% in the space of a month, as more people were allowed to travel more.

Now that the Asia-Pacific region has achieved 100% across the board, we now have a new benchmark utilization within the region to work from.

This data was put together using Aviation Week’s Tracked Aircraft Utilization tool.

Daniel Williams

Based in the UK, Daniel is Director of Fleet Data Services for Aviation Week Network. Prior to joining Aviation Week in 2017, Daniel held a number of industry positions analyzing fleet data.

FlightFriday

Flight Friday is compiled using data from Aviation Week Intelligence Network’s (AWIN) Tracked Aircraft Utilization module, the most comprehensive and accurate solution for global tracking of aircraft utilization. 

Based on recorded flight movements from ADS-B data, combined with AWIN’s robust fleet intelligence, users gain insight into the aircraft’s actual versus reported movement, down to the tail number. This unique solution provides users a more up-to-date and comprehensive analysis of aircraft utilization.