55% of the world’s airline fleets are grounded

Our latest analysis shows that 55% of the total airline fleets around the world are now grounded. Based on data from ch-aviation’s fleets advanced data, 17,944 aircraft are now parked for storage or maintenance globally.

The percentage of grounded aircraft is lower than the number of scheduled flights in the world, as many airlines drastically reduced the utilisation of the aircraft instead of complete grounding. Still, almost 18,000 aircraft grounded is an unprecedented number in the industry.

The highest percentage of grounded fleets we see are in Africa, where airlines parked 74% of their fleets. Europe is the close runner-up with 72% of the fleet grounded and the highest number of inactive aircraft (5,796).

The lowest percentage of parked aircraft is now in North America (39%), but this can be explained because the airlines are still in the process of schedule reductions and aircraft parking. We may expect more in the next few weeks.

We have also looked to the airports with the highest number of aircraft parked for storage or maintenance. The three largest airports are in United States. This can be explained by the usual practice of U.S. airlines sending non-used aircraft for storage in dry conditions. This is not that usual in the other parts of the world, where airlines usually park aircraft in their operational bases if there is enough parking space.

TOP 20 airports with the largest number of parked aircraft:

There are no airports in Europe in the top 20 because in Europe airlines usually do not send aircraft to dedicated airports for parking. Most of the grounded aircraft in Europe are parked at airline bases. Madrid Barajas Airport has the largest number of aircraft parked for storage or maintenance – 113 aircraft, followed by Munich Airport (110) and Vienna airport (109).

We will continue to monitor the situation on capacities and will post on our blog. Follow us here and follow our #chaviationcovid19updates on Linkedin.