CANSO and Cirium partner to detail global impact of pandemic on commercial airline fleets

CANSO and Cirium have produced a detailed report looking at the global impact of COVID-19 on airline fleet utilisation. The data shows the percentages of different aircraft types in storage, by region, throughout the course of the pandemic.

Before COVID hit, over 90% of the world’s passenger aircraft were in active service and being operated at high rates every day. Each had load factors of nearly 95%. An aircraft would normally only go into storage if it was close to the end of its economic life.

But when COVID hit, capacity vastly exceeded demand almost overnight, and some 17,000 passenger jets were put in storage in April 2020. By working with Cirium, we can know show the full impact of the pandemic on airlines’ fleets and, happily, report the early signs of recovery, especially in the US and China.