This week’s Flight Friday looks at the split recovery in Latin American operators’ domestic and international utilization profiles.
Like the rest of the world, domestic utilization rebounded the quickest, post-pandemic. Latin America is made up of many large countries, where sometimes ground infrastructure is difficult. This environment encourages a higher demand domestic market.
At the start of 2022, domestic flying within Latin American countries returned to its equivalent month 2019 utilization. Domestic flights carried on growing, and for most of 2022 they were 10% higher than 2019. There was further improvement in 2023, with domestic flights touching 20% higher than pre-pandemic levels in May 2023. During the latter months of the year, utilization dropped back to around 6% greater than 2019, before another surge in January 2024 brought domestic lying back towards the 20% higher levels.
Again, following other global trends, Latin America’s international flights lagged. It took an extra 12 months for the international number of flights to be at or above the equivalent month in 2019. From the start of 2023, international flights crossed the 100% threshold for the first time. Utilization during 2023 remained in the high single digit percentages above 2019 levels. However, 2024 has started off at a really good pace, with equivalent utilization moving to 20% greater than 2019 levels.
Ultimately, utilization can be seen as a factor of fleet growth, though the installed Latin American in-service fleet has grown by a relatively small number, around 30 commercial aircraft. So Latin American operators are getting more cycles out of their fleets.
This data was put together using Aviation Week’s Tracked Aircraft Utilization tool.
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