IBA Insight shows Middle East airlines surpassing pre-pandemic capacity

IBA’s latest Aviation Industry Barometer shows that Middle Eastern operators surpassed pre-pandemic capacity with ASKs at 103% in May 2023 compared to 2019 levels.

Data from IBA Insight, IBA’s aviation intelligence platform, revealed that in May:

• Monthly global passenger capacity reached 96% of pre-pandemic ASKs in May 2023, an improvement of +1% compared to April 2023.

• Middle Eastern operators surpassed pre-pandemic capacity with ASKs at 103% compared to 2019. The region now joins the ranks of Latin America, North America and Africa where operators are on-average already trending above 2019 capacity levels.

• IBA expects global passenger ASKs to surpass 2019 levels by July 2023, although operators in Europe and APAC are still lagging.

• Passenger ASKs from Chinese operators are trending at 87% of 2019 levels, a slight retreat from 88% in April 2023, but nonetheless a strong improvement from 44% in December 2022.

• In May 2023, 397k commercial passenger flights were recorded by Chinese operators, compared to 391k in April 2023.

• Overall, there were approximately 2.81 million commercial passenger flights in May 2023, compared to 2.65 million in April 2023, while 2.31 million flights were recorded in May 2022.

• There were 123 commercial aircraft deliveries in May 2023, representing a month-on-month and year-on-year variance of +34% and +41% respectively.