Airports Council International – North America Airport Insights Report

Posted on | by RaechelRucker

By Isaac Pato, Data Analyst; Jon Jager, Solutions Engineer; and Loretta Manning, Digital Marketing at Cirium.

 

Airports Council International – North America regularly provides industry intelligence: research, reports and resources which helps its members stay ahead of the curve and better serve their passengers, customers, and communities. Toward that end, Cirium, in collaboration with ACI-NA, utilizes comprehensive data sets such as schedules, flight status, aircraft configuration, ownership data and many more, to produce the Airports Council International – North America Airport Insights Report. Cirium brings together powerful data and analytics for travel companies, aircraft manufacturers, airports, airlines and financial institutions, among others. The aim of this Report is to bring in-depth insights to the airport community.

With this monthly report, it is ACI-NA’s and Cirium’s goal to provide useful insights which will equip airports with information needed to see trends and comparisons as a snapshot now, and recent trends over time, as well as forecasts.

With this data, airport stakeholders will better understand flight schedules, operations, and airport and airline trends focused on the region with a global snapshot for comparison. The report includes:

  • Top 4 U.S. and Top Canadian Airports and Airlines by Seat Volume
  • Seats by Week trends
  • % of Daily Flights Cancelled
  • New Routes added and Seats by Cabin Class trends
  • Forecast seats for the next two months broken down by regional and global seats

Sample Report insights

From the April 2023 report

In the above graph we see that global cancellations have trended significantly lower in response to China’s COVID recovery.

Of course, a large factor of the cancellation trend is seen in the above non-NA airlines seat volumes graph above. (The report also includes Top NA airline seat volumes.)

Three Chinese airlines, China Southern Airlines (CZ), China Eastern Airlines (MU), and Air China Limited (CA), have doubled their seat capacity year-over-year, as shown by the black line (100% difference). Meanwhile, the bar charts indicate that these three carriers are adding seat volume on a week-over-week basis, likely indicating that Chinese recovery is still in progress.

In comparison, IndiGo (6E) and Ryanair (FR) both show modest year-over-year growth, consistent with normal operations.

 

Airlines continue to grow

This chart shows new direct flight routes added this month in North America. It is helpful to see where carriers are focused on expanding their networks.

Because we use an entire 12-month period preceding the current month, these route additions are more likely attributable to genuine expansion rather than seasonal operations.

 

 

 

 

Forecasting seats


In the report, we also show seats forecasted – two months ahead. We see how agile airlines are making changes all the time up to the last minute.

Airports need to see forecasts for many reasons, including:

  • billing
  • budgeting
  • planning
  • staffing
  • and more

Look for the Airports Council International – North America Airport Insights Report each month in the Centerlines newsletter. Download the May Report now.