25 April: US & Canada Aviation Traffic Report

Last week (starting April 18), US passenger airlines carried 58% of pre-crisis passenger volume on 69% of the flights utilizing 87% of their fleet.

Strong numbers continue with respect to number of flight operations in the US; Delta, Alaska, Republic, PSA, Endeavor, and Horizion had their busiest COVID-era weeks last week, as did airports JFK, SEA, MIA, PHX, IAH, BOS, and DTW. Derived load factors are down, but only slightly.

The big story fleet-wise is the most recent round of MAX groundings (some additional info is included in the chart further below); here are some noteworthy fleet shifts in the last four weeks since the last report:

• Southwest: -7 B38M, +5 B737
• Delta: +5 B739
• American: +25 A319, +5 A321, -14 B38M, +14 B738, +4 B772, +5 B789
• United: -14 B39M, +8 B738, +3 B763
• JetBlue: -5 A320
• Allegiant: -5 A320

New Grounding Issues Grounding MAXes

Since the last update four weeks ago, Boeing ran into another snag with the 737 MAX, which ended up grounding dozens of US-based aircraft just as the fleet was coming back online as the MCAS issue was resolved. This appears to be having a non-trivial impact on the fleets of Southwest, United, American, and to a lesser extent, Alaska, who this week appear to have grounded ~63 aircraft between the four of them.

Departures by Airport

If interested on an airport-by-airport breakdown, FlightAware now has an excellent interactive graph for each airport with their data; scroll to the bottom of the respective airport page to see. Here's MSP as an example.

Departures by Airline

Fleet Evolution by Airline

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.