Australia-USA airline and route performance
Last week we published a detailed analysis on the Australia - United States market highlighting how a dramatic increase in capacity by airlines over the 2023-24 Christmas and New Year period went mostly unfilled. The analysis outlined a hypothesis why US carriers, particularly United Airlines, increased capacity, while Qantas remained very pragmatic.
Specifically, it pointed to the Australian and US Dollar exchange rates, the Australian point-of-sale bias, augmented by United’s systemwide capacity decisions, including their inability to return substantial capacity to their previously large Chinese market. It’s a detailed but compelling read and is also a great example that different carriers face different incentives and macroeconomic headwinds.
The great United Airlines Australian capacity dump of 2023 and 2024
The recovery of international air travel to and from Australia since the COVID-19 pandemic has been characterised by cautious approaches from both Australian and foreign carriers. Extended border closures combined with challenges returning aircraft to service have plagued airlines across the world. In the year to February 2023, data from our
The analysis didn’t spend too much time looking at the performance of each airline on a route-by-route basis since this would distract from the analysis’s messages which were very much focused on the macro-level incentives, strategy, capacity, and performance. After some questions on social media, we thought it would be good to return to this but with limited analysis. We leave it up to you to make your own mind about airline specific route-by-route performance. We’ll just leave you with several interesting figures, but let us know what you think using the comments below.