Since the start of the global COVID-19 outbreak, Cirium has been tracking the changes to the market on a daily basis. We documented the surge of aircraft being classified as stored between March and April 2020, see graph below. In addition, we have provided flights and aircraft activity updates for airlines and regions during the Hibernation phase. Now, there is a desire from everyone in the industry to start navigating the flight plan to recovery.
Over the previous weekend, Cirium’s team of data researchers classified an additional 29 commercial passenger jets as in-service, the small increase was not enough to change the overall percentage from 43%. The number of stored aircraft changed from 15,002 to 14,970, 57% of the global fleet and a reduction of 32 commercial passenger jets.
New Zealand presents an interesting case study into how we can expect national aviation markets to begin their recovery phase after a Covid-19 outbreak has been largely brought under control.
Aircraft tracking data for New Zealand operators up to and including Sunday 30th May shows flight activity for regional turboprops trending strongly upwards, closely followed by Airbus A320 Family narrowbodies. Air New Zealand’s widebody twinjet operations, meanwhile, are recovering much more slowly. However it is notable that its comparatively smaller and newer 787-9s have overtaken its 777s in terms of tracked cycles.
These usage patterns are reflective of the expectation that domestic markets will recover first, followed by intra-regional and finally intercontinental.
Overall, New Zealand operators have just over half of their passenger aircraft in service. Flag-carrier Air New Zealand is using more than two-thirds of its 23 De Havilland Dash 8 Q300 turboprops but fewer than half of its 34 A320/A321s.
Its widedody usage is indicative of operational demand for both belly-hold cargo capacity and latest-generation efficiency. All eight of the carrier’s 777-200ERs remain in storage but all seven of its larger -300ERs are in service, while 11 of its 14 787-9s are also performing revenue flights.
Globally Cirium now classifies just under 15,000 passenger jets as stored, representing exactly 57% of the total fleet.
Note: as of today we are making a further adjustment to best reflect the current in service and stored fleets. Aircraft will now be classified as entering storage if any of the following criteria are met: 30 days of continuous inactivity; ferry to a known storage facility; or airline-announced grounding or retirement of aircraft with immediate effect.
Aircraft will now be returned to service if we see at least one flight – or in most cases one pair/set of flights – after a period of storage or inactivity (subject to review by our dedicated research team).
Full details of the revised methodology are available here: https://www.cirium.com/thoughtcloud/understanding-ciriums-methodology-for-stored-aircraft-during-covid-19/
We documented the shut down phase with a rise in stored aircraft from 3,254 aircraft on 19th March to 15,768 on 14/04/2020. Cirium’s team of data researchers have been monitoring the market and classifying aircraft as in-storage based on their strict criteria, read more about their methodology here.
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