14 April: US & Canada COVID-19 Aviation Traffic Report

FedEx drastically increasing Sunday flights; on track for 1,000+ additional flights month to month

FedEx recently got itself a few headlines by announcing they were adding 150 flights over the next month and reactivating aircraft for increased Asia-US demand; my napkin math suggests that might translates to bringing a pair of MD-11s back and using them to get an extra daily arrival into the US... not a huge development in terms of their overall network.

I did find something interested in FedEx's numbers though; yesterday my spreadsheet said they'd increased 22%, which I assumed was a mistake until I double-checked - they've been steadily increasing their Sunday capacity since the crisis started, to the point where there were nearly 50 extra US departures on Easter compared to pre-crisis Sundays - pretty impressive. Last week their numbers were up 7% overall - it appears they're on track to operate more than 1,000 additional flights this month (and those are just the departures from US airports that JetTip's system is tracking - there are more segments overseas).

Traffic Graphs

Another day of bad news for US and Canadian air traffic; I wouldn't normally expect to see airlines and airports hitting record lows on Mondays, when traffic traditionally recovers after a low on Saturday, but Air Canada JetBlue, Spirit, and Mesa and airports MCO and BOS managed to do just that. With passenger volumes down 95%+, and airlines flying more than CARES act requires, there's still plenty of time to hit new lows, sadly.

News from Elsewhere

• Berlin Airlift Historical Foundation's C-54 sustains tornado damage
• Northrop Grumman's Stargazer departs PMD; Christopher McGreevy
• Virgin Orbit test flight at PMD; Jack Beyer
• Borders to stay closed, travellers urged to 'see Australia first' once curbs ease; David Crowe, Sydney Morning Herald
• Airlines Doing Good Deeds During the Covid-19 AirPocalypse + How You Can Help! Chris Sloan, Airline Reporter
• Do Airlines Have a Duty to Consider Morality in Pricing? Brett Snyder, Cranky Flyer
• Allegiant's request for CARES exemptions; Seth Miller
• Three Points: Airbus production cuts, a Boeing Bailout, future freighters; Jon Ostrower, The Air Current
• Southwest Moves Toward a Hub Model With May Schedule; Brett Snyder, Cranky Flier
• IATA COVID-19 Impact Coverage; Seth Miller

Additional Aviation News Resources

If you're looking to keep tabs on what's going on, there are lots of great places to be keeping track of aviation news.

• JetTip's Aviation News list with tweets from generally reliable sources
• JetTip's realtime diversion tracking page
• Coronavirus Flight Cancelation Tracker
• TSA Sreening Volume
• The Air Current
• PaxEx.Aero
• Cranky Flier's Daily Update
• Ethan Klapper's Bluer Skies

Methodology: Departures by Airline Since Late February

COVID-19 started impacting aviation in China at the end of January, which also impacted the US and Canadian routes to Asia, but large differences in the number of flights being operated by carriers on this side of the Pacific didn't really start adding up until a couple of weeks ago. A few places had been sharing global trends, but I was selfishly interested in an airline by airline breakdown of how significant the impact had been.

The methodology here is to count all flights between 12:00:00 AM and 11:59:59 PM eastern time that departed from an airport in the airline's respective home country (Delta departures from US airports, WestJet departures from Canadian airports, etc.). Since commercial airline schedules are highly cyclical, the percent change is derived by comparing the specified day's count compared to the average of the number of flights each airline operated during three previous "pre-crisis" weeks, 22 February - 13 March.

Nick Benson

Nick lives in Burnsville, Minnesota with his wife and three children. He grooves on railroad and aviation photography, politics, geography, weather, and LEGO. He started JetTip's smart flight alert service in 2017, and is now a full-time avgeek. He can frequently be found atop a step ladder at MSP's Aircraft Viewing Area.