Issue 64 Monday 18 January 2021 www.anker-report.com Contents 2021 set to start badly in Europe but 1 2021 set to start badly in Europe but vaccines provide hope for second half of year. vaccines provide hope for second half 3 Ryanair set to further tighten grip on Italian market with new base in So what has happened in Europe since the last issue of The airlines saw a significant drop in flights compared with the Venice set to open in summer. ANKER Report in mid-December? Well, the UK and EU finally previous week. easyJet’s operations fell once more to less than managed to agree a Brexit trade deal after all, COVID vaccines 10% of their operations compared with a year ago, while British 4 Latest European route news; 63 new have started being administered across the region, the Dutch Airways and Vueling were both well below 20% of their flights routes from 28 airlines analysed. and Italian governments are in crisis, and the mutant strains of compared with early 2020. 8 Montenegro sees collapse of COVID identified in the UK, South Africa and Brazil have raised Only KLM, among major airlines, was operating at above 50% of national carrier which was significant health concerns, resulting in further travel last year’s flights, though mention should be made of Norway’s responsible for 25% of traffic in restrictions in many European countries. This included the UK domestic carrier Widerøe which has consistently operated at 2019; several carriers could be closure of all ‘air corridors’ last Friday. well over 80% of last year’s capacity during the pandemic. number one in ‘21. The general consensus seems to be that the first quarter of LCC operations vary more by day of week 9 Mini airport profiles of Alta in 2021, which is rarely a profitable period for any of Europe’s airlines, is going to be pretty disastrous. UK leisure carrier Analysing the latest daily movement data from Eurocontrol for Norway, Granada in Spain and Jet2.com recently suspended all flights to all destinations until three low-cost carriers, six flag-carriers and Widerøe reveals Rennes in France. 25 March. The second quarter of this year may see some significant differences in operations across the week. The six 10 Europe to South Africa market was gradual improvement compared to the first quarter. The hope national carriers show relatively little variation across the week. growing slowly with UK and BA is that warmer weather and the vaccination programme will However, easyJet, Ryanair and Wizz Air have a very different sufficiently reduce COVID cases in the third quarter of this year profile, with Sunday the peak day of operation and Wednesday leading the way; SAA’s problems being the quietest. All three carriers operate more than five and COVID make future uncertain. to allow countries to reduce travel restrictions, and thus make international air travel across Europe more viable. times as many flights on a Sunday than they do on a Wednesday, at least at present. December traffic mostly better than November Welcome The other outlier is Widerøe, which operates consistently from Analysis of The ANKER Report’s database of passenger figures Monday to Friday, but then has a big drop on Saturday and for European airports confirms that in many countries, then an improvement on Sunday. December traffic was not down as much as in November. Spain’s airports saw traffic drop by 79% in December compared Domestic traffic picking up in India and US with 84% in November, while in Norway demand was down Looking at available traffic data from major markets outside of 70% in the last month of the year compared with 78% in the Europe shows that domestic traffic has been growing steadily in previous month. In Lithuania the improvement was just two both India and the US, with India at 50% of last year’s figure in percentage points (from 91% to 89%), while in Finland there November and the US at 40%. China’s latest figure for October was no improvement, with traffic down 91% for the third shows demand there is almost back to previous year levels, as it consecutive month. was in September. However, Russia, which was at over 90% in Among Europe’s busier airports, Amsterdam has, for the fourth August and September has seen domestic demand drop to time in five months, welcomed more passengers than London around 70% of last year’s figure in November. December data LHR. In December the Dutch hub handled 1.23 million for both Norway and Spain shows an uptick in both countries relative to November. Is that a light at the end of the tunnel, passengers (down 77%) compared with 900,000 in November (down 83%). The UK’s busiest airport saw 1.14 million International traffic has shown little sign of improvement in or a train coming towards us? While passengers last month (down 83%) compared with 747,000 in recent months in most markets with the exception of India and there are grounds for cautious medium November (down 88%). the US, where there has been slow but steady progress. -term optimism with the roll-out of While both of the these hubs saw an improvement of around November saw US international traffic at 30% of the previous several vaccines, the short-term five to six percentage points, Copenhagen’s improvement was year’s level, its best result since March. However, China’s prognosis for Europe’s air travel three percentage points (from 91% down to 88% down), while international traffic is still at just 3% of the level in October industries remains bleak, with rising Munich saw no improvement, with traffic down 93% in both 2019, while Australia is at just 2%. Again, available data for COVID cases (and fatalities) resulting in months. Athens was unusual in performing worse in December, December shows a small improvement in both Norway and Spain, relative to November. ever more stringent travel restrictions with traffic down 86% compared with 84% in November. across much of the region. Ryanair just edges Turkish Airlines in December Over 60 new services launched in last five weeks Four of Europe’s biggest airlines have reported December The ANKER Report’s New European Route Database (NERD) file A year on from the first inkling of the traffic data. Ryanair’s passenger numbers are down 83% to 1.9 has identified over 60 new services, involving European pandemic, it is still far from clear how million with a load factor of 73%, Turkish Airlines has seen airports, which were launched during the last five weeks. This quickly commercial air travel in Europe passenger numbers fall 65%, to 1.89 million (with a load factor included the period over Christmas and New Year when several will return to a position where of 64%), and Wizz Air has operations are profitable for the reported carrying 666,000 majority of players. passengers (down 80%) at a load factor of 56%. SAS reported that In this issue we again look at global it carried 389,000 passengers in traffic trends to see how domestic and December, a decrease of 80%. international markets are evolving. Passenger load factor improved from just 25.3% in November to Despite all the issues, we have analysis 33.1% in December. Neither Air of over 60 new route launches. France KLM Group, IAG nor Lufthansa Group, all of whom Ralph Anker now only report traffic data on a [email protected] quarterly basis, have yet published figures for Q4. New Year boost As anticipated, flight data from Eurocontrol showed a small improvement in flight numbers around Christmas and New Year compared with previous weeks. However, for the week ending 16 January, all of Europe’s major The ANKER Report Issue 64: Monday 18 January 2021 1 airlines, notably in France and Spain, offered a short programme of domestic routes not normally operated by those carriers. There were also additional new domestic services in Italy and Norway offered by Wizz Air. Wizz Air adds four more airports Wizz Air was responsible for 12 of the new routes, which included adding four new airports to its network; Alta and Kirkenes in Norway, Funchal on the Portuguese island of Madeira and Lamezia Terme in Italy. In addition, the carrier finally saw the first flight of its Abu Dhabi based subsidiary when service to Athens began on Friday 15 January. New routes to the Canary Islands were also popular (with easyJet, Lufthansa and Ryanair), while SkyUp Airlines launched three new routes between Ukraine and Turkey. Greece’s Sky Express took a significant step forward by starting service on one of Greece’s busiest routes with its newly acquired A320s. KLM and Virgin Atlantic add long-haul routes Despite the obvious challenges, some carriers added new long-haul routes recently. Virgin Atlantic started two new routes to Pakistan from Heathrow, while KLM began a 2- weekly service to Riyadh in Saudi Arabia. Heathrow benefitted from British Airways launching Montego Bay flights and SriLankan offering a new link to the Maldives. The ANKER Report Issue 64: Monday 18 January 2021 2 Ryanair set to further tighten grip on Italian market with new base in Venice as Alitalia’s post-pandemic future remains rather uncertain The Italian government is in crisis and Alitalia is going to have another ‘reset’. Some things it seems don’t change, even during a global pandemic. What exactly the latest incarnation of the Italian national carrier will look like and which routes it will operate, is still far from clear, especially as Italy is the European country with the second highest number of reported COVID deaths after the UK.