Chart of the week #17: Qantas Group international capacity finally reaches pre-pandemic level

Much has been discussed regarding international airline capacity to/from Australia in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. This led to the development of our Analytic Flying Capacity Tracker, a public tool to view international seat capacity by airline, city and country over time.

The easy-to-use dashboard utilises publicly available BITRE data, however BITRE data is published with a significant lag (e.g. the most recent data is only available through September 2024), limiting the public discourse. This led us to develop a method for estimating capacity utilising ADS-B data, allowing an up-to-date estimate.

Analytic Flying Capacity Tracker: Updated June 2024

We updated the Capacity Tracker as frequently as possible, however this has become less frequency over time. To mark the end of 2024 we are presently updating the tracker, giving us a glimpse of some important milestones. One such milestone is Qantas’s group level capacity.

While it’s taken some time, Qantas has finally reached (and surpassed) its pre-pandemic capacity! 2024 group level international capacity reached 44.5 billion ASKs (Available Seat Kilometers), increasing from 37.0 billion ASKs in 2023, and exceeding the 43.6 and 43.0 billion ASKs achieved in 2018 and 2019. 2024 capacity represents a 1.6% and 2.8% increase over 2018 and 2019, respectively.

Notably, this has been achieved by significant capacity growth at Jetstar, with ASKs increasing by 31.6% between 2019 and 2024. Qantas’s mainline capacity declined by 7.3% during this time. We’ve previously discussed the reasons for Qantas’s capacity challenges due to a perfect storm of aircraft retirements, heavy maintenance cycles and aircraft refurbishments.

Qantas's long haul fleet capacity: how much of an impact did the pandemic have?

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How has Jetstar been able to grow capacity?

Jetstar’s capacity growth shouldn’t come as a surprise to readers. In January 2024 we highlighted how Jetstar was utilising new A321neo LRs to replace B787 flying to Bali, allowing their redeployment to longer routes into Asia, and in some cases taking over mainline flying (e.g. Sydney-Osaka).

This strategy has come to its completion with the last B787 flight to Bali in December 2024, however additional new A321 LRs are expanding international capacity on existing and new routes (e.g. Perth-Bangkok, Perth-Phuket and Melbourne-Nadi).

Is Jetstar’s A321neo Long Range Qantas’s saviour?

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More questions than answers …

You probably have a lot of questions, particularly regarding capacity return by region, the underlying strategy of the capacity shift from Qantas mainline to Jetstar, and forward looking capacity expectations. We’ll come back to these important questions in the coming weeks!

And in case you missed it, here is our last “chart of the week”! Thanks for reading and remember to subscribe and share!

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