European Carriers Anticipate Robust Summer Travel Demand

If airline schedules planned for the northern summer 2023 are maintained, seat capacity across Europe is set to return to about 93% of 2019 levels during peak travel weeks, with many short-haul markets exceeding levels seen before the pandemic.

Analysis of OAG data shows that European capacity will hit around 34.3 million weekly seats by late July—putting the region ahead of 2017 and only narrowly down on the volume available at the same time in 2018.

Popular leisure destinations Greece, Portugal, Turkey and Croatia will all see a higher level of capacity than in 2019, while Italy and Spain will be broadly in line with pre-crisis totals.

“The outlook is reasonably robust for summer 2023,” according to Ryanair Group CEO Michael O’Leary, who said the Irish airline was on track for a “strong” season.

He added that demand was being driven in part by the return of Asian tourists to Europe and the strength of the US dollar, which is boosting transatlantic travel.

“We believe we will see robust demand both through Easter and into summer 2023 for short-haul flights across Europe,” O’Leary said.

Although the demise of UK regional carrier Flybe and Norwegian startup Flyr in late January highlighted the ongoing challenges facing European airlines because of high fuel costs and inflationary pressures, the two failures are proving to be an exception rather than the rule.

The sentiments of Ryanair—whose summer 2023 capacity across the group’s various AOCs will be about 31% higher than in 2019—have been echoed by low-cost counterparts Wizz Air and easyJet, with each pointing to healthy forward bookings as customers opt to protect their vacations despite the higher cost of living and rising air fares.

For the larger network carriers, the outlook is also broadly positive. International Airlines Group (IAG), the owner of British Airways (BA) and Iberia, bounced back to a €1.3 billion ($1.4 billion) profit in 2022 following a €2.8 billion loss in 2021. It has forecast profits this year will climb to between €1.8 billion and €2.3 billion as leisure and business travel recovers further.

Germany’s Lufthansa is also reactivating more widebody aircraft that were grounded during the pandemic to help meet demand—with the Airbus A380 coming out of hibernation—while Air France-KLM declared it has “turned the page on COVID.” The Franco-Dutch airline company said it expects capacity to return to 90%-95% of 2019 levels from the first quarter of 2023 and reach 95%-100% for the year as a whole.

“We’re happy that the Chinese market has opened sooner than expected, and we’re happy to see the demand environment and the yield environment,” Air France-KLM CEO Ben Smith said.

Headwinds

However, European network carriers are continuing to find some long-haul markets tough going despite the easing of travel restrictions. The ongoing closure of Russia’s airspace following Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine means that many flights to Asia need to take onerous detours.

Aaron McGarvey, head of network strategy and development at Finnair, said the closure has added 3-4 hr. to each leg, which “completely violates” the airline’s hub structure in Helsinki. He added that many Asian carriers have a competitive advantage over their European counterparts because they continue to overfly Russia.

While matching capacity to demand will continue to be an issue on some long-haul routes, it also remains one of the biggest tests for the European ecosystem as a whole.

Europe’s air traffic manager Eurocontrol expects traffic to hit 92% of 2019 levels in 2023 and to fully recover during 2025. However, that recovery will come one year later than previously forecast in June 2022.

Eurocontrol has admitted that getting closer to pre-pandemic traffic figures will not be easy against a backdrop of supply chain issues, possible industrial action, airspace unavailability, sector bottlenecks and rising demand.

Wizz Air CEO Jozsef Varadi expects there to be significant air traffic control (ATC) delays this summer, in part due to the war in Ukraine. “The whole system is understaffed and dealing with increasing levels of complexity arising from the partial closure of airspace … and an increase in military use of airspace,” he said. “In Europe, ATC is going to be the trickiest constituent going into the summer.”

Alongside the ATC challenges, airlines and airports are under increasing pressure to avoid another wave of travel disruption that blighted the summer 2022 when flight cancellations, delays and lost luggage characterized the season.

Amsterdam Schiphol and London Heathrow were at the center of the storm and among the airports to introduce passenger limits amid staffing shortages. Both are now taking steps to put measures in place designed to alleviate disruption this summer.

Amsterdam plans to limit passenger numbers in April and May during peak morning hours, while Heathrow intends to stop carriers from adding flights if spare slots become available.

IAG CEO Luis Gallego has conceded that he remains “worried” about how Heathrow will perform. “We hope that Heathrow is going to put in the resources necessary for the capacity we are going to fly,” he said.

Outgoing Heathrow CEO John Holland-Kaye has acknowledged that the industry still needs more skilled staff to meet rising demand but said more than 25,000 people have started working at the UK airport in the past 18 months, adding he remains confident it would be able to avoid a repeat of 2022.

Whether Heathrow—and the rest of Europe’s aviation industry—can meet the levels of demand expected remains to be seen, but the millions of holidaymakers preparing for a long-awaited getaway will certainly be hoping so.