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The daily rate of increase in the stored passenger jet fleet – according to Cirium’s classification – has fallen to its lowest level since 20th March after a net rise of 380 aircraft was recorded since yesterday’s (7th April) update.http://www.tourismlegal.com.au/

We now place more than 15,500 widebodies, narrowbodies and regional jets in storage, leaving just over 10,700 as operational (with observed flight activity in the past seven days). The in-service fleet has therefore reached a fresh low of less than 41% of the global inventory.

Modest net increases in the active fleets for 10 jet airliner types were logged in Cirium’s database since yesterday, however these were almost exclusively non Airbus and Boeing-built and mainly comprised regional jets and older-generation narrowbodies. The exception was the four-engined A340, for which the operational inventory increased by one to 36. Meanwhile we now classify just six A380s as having in-service status.

We continue to observe significant churn caused by aircraft with no activity then seeing short bursts of utilisation before a further period of inactivity.

Today we use our 600 sources of flight status and tracking data to visualise the daily trend by operator region for scheduled flights with Airbus and Boeing aircraft types, compared with a year earlier.  This clearly illustrates how Asia Pacific carriers were impacted by the spread of Covid-19 from February, before the other regions began to decline in unison from March. Asia last month plateaued with flight numbers approximately 40% lower than last year, before resuming its decline as operations were curtailed in the rest of the world.

Based on data for Monday 6th April 2020, Middle Eastern and European carriers flew approximately 95% fewer flights with Airbus and Boeing types than they did on Monday 8th April 2019. Asia Pacific was 72% down, while North America saw only a 63% reduction. Africa and Latin America recorded declines of 98% and 92%, respectively.

 

Stored commercial aircraft / utilization update – 07/04/2020

The long wait for hard evidence that the global passenger jet storage figure is reaching its peak looks set to continue for at least a few more days, after Cirium’s experts added just under 650 more aircraft to the total since yesterday’s (6th April) update.

Applying our strict criteria of at least seven consecutive days of verified inactivity, we now classify just under 15,200 widebodies, narrowbodies and regional jets as being in-storage, leaving approximately 11,100 aircraft – or 42% of the global inventory – in service.

There were net increases in storage totals for all types apart from the Airbus A300 widebody twin, for which the in-service fleet grew by a single aircraft, to eight.

We continue to observe a dramatic reduction in utilisation of the very largest aircraft. There are now only 23 passenger 747 aircraft in service from a total fleet of 184, while we classify just 12 of the 239-strong A380 fleet as remaining in service.

However there is some cause for optimism as the overall ‘pipeline’ of aircraft that the Cirium research team would expect to classify as stored in the coming days is clearly reducing. As noted yesterday, we are observing significant churn caused by aircraft with no activity then seeing short bursts of utilisation before a further period of inactivity.

Meanwhile, using Cirium’s 600 sources of flight status and tracking data, we are able to visualise the proportion of each operator’s fleet (Airbus and Boeing types) that flew at least one scheduled flight in the seven days up to and including Sunday 5th April (see graphic below). The operators are ranked by fleet size (total in-service and in-storage aircraft).

This analysis shows that Chinese carriers such as Shenzhen Airlines and Xiamen Airlines have flown almost all their aircraft at least once in the previous seven days (30 Mar – 5 Apr), while in contrast Europe’s EasyJet and India’s IndiGo have operated virtually zero scheduled flights.