Air traffic was floundering, it is now breaking records. Airlines had seen the number of reservations take off. In May, they were close to their pre-health crisis level, at 96% of attendance in the same month in 2019. But the recovery now marks a record. On July 6, 134,000 commercial flights were recorded by the Flight radar 24 site, which tracks these aerial activities daily.
It was the “busiest day for commercial aviation we have ever tracked,” the website, created in 2007, notes on Twitter. In total, the tracker recorded 250,000 flights of all types in a single day. . This data includes “general aviation, a large portion of the total number of flights, plus helicopters, military activities and other business aircraft activities”, explains Flight Radar 24.
Traffic recovery
These data confirm the recovery announced for the sector, very impacted by the Covid-19 crisis. The International Air Transport Association (Iata) announced at the beginning of June that it was planning 4.35 billion individual air journeys this year, close to the record of 4.54 billion in 2019. It also welcomed an aircraft load factor in May of 81.8%, back to its pre-Covid level.
In France, air traffic in May, expressed in number of passengers, returned to 99.6% of the monthly level before the pandemic, the General Directorate of Civil Aviation (DGAC) indicated at the end of June. Having lost almost two-thirds of its passengers in 2020, the airline industry has since rebounded: Iata said it expects its members to make $9.8 billion in global profit this year, after cumulative losses of 183 billion in 2020-2022.