March 2022 v. March 2019

A Monthly Look at Capacity Trends by Single-Aisle Aircraft With a Focus on the Deployment of Aircraft With 50 Seats or Less

New Stuff In This Deck

A new venture has come aboard this month (and hopefully more). Its name is aerology, and its leader is one Tim Donohue, son of DFW’s Sean Donohue.

• Tim’s venture looks at many factors that might contribute to service disruptions. Of course, one of those inputs would be a shortage of pilots today. Because that is the catalyst behind this deck, we asked Tim if he would show us his analysis that stress tests pilot availability by carrier. As this data point swings by the minute and not hours, days, and weeks, the inclusion of this work is to flag where issues might appear. Not that they assuredly will.

• Tim’s analysis for March 2022 points to the regional sector of the business as having some potential disruption. But look carefully, there is exposure among the network carriers, Southwest and the ULCCs as well.

• In addition, we have added a new 2019 baseline that we have not presented before. It is simply domestic traffic from nonhub airports expressed as a percent of total network carrier connecting hub domestic throughput.

  • AA’s hubs ranked on reliance on nonhub traffic: DFW, CLT, ORD

  • DL’s hubs ranked on reliance on nonhub traffic: ATL, MSP, DTW

  • UA’s hubs ranked on reliance on nonhub traffic: DEN, ORD, IAH

Red Thinking