Aviation data analyst Cirium has released its latest figures on the number of aircraft grounded and in storage due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Their data now suggests that there are now more widebodies, narrowbodies and regional jets inactive than in service.
As of 3 April there were 13,655 aircraft are classified as in storage compared with 12,635 that remain active (i.e. with observed flight activity within the past seven days).
The daily rate of increase in the stored inventory has remained at just over 500 for the past two days with 530 added over the last 24 hours before the figures were released.
At the beginning of the crisis over one month ago on 25 March the number was still shocking at around 6,600 but has continued to rise as further borders closed and the demand for flights dwindled.
Cirium reports wide-bodied aircraft are worst affected.
“Widebody types have been impacted particularly hard due to government-imposed travel restrictions on international travellers. Cirium lists 62 per cent of the current global fleet of Airbus and Boeing twin-aisles (3,144 aircraft) as stored. There is however a disparity between manufacturers, as 70 per cent of Airbus widebody models are grounded, compared with 56 per cent for Boeing. Meanwhile, at the upper end of the market in terms of capacity there are now only 28 passenger 747s and 21 A380s in service.”
Cirum has also been using flight tracking data to monitor the slow recovery of Chinese airlines. It found that looking at Airbus and Boeing types for Wednesday, 1 April 2020, 4.1 per cent fewer aircraft were observed flying compared with a week earlier, while flight hours and cycles were down 9.6 per cent and 5.4 per cent, respectively, indicating that the process is very slow as restrictions are slowly loosened on Chinese travel.
One could expect that with most of their planes grounded, airlines would face minimal costs, however the reality is far from this.
Simple Flying reports that Delta is currently burning through US$60 million a day, and Jet Blue $10 million. IATA expects that the industry as a whole will burn through $61 billion of their cash reserves during the second quarter of the year.
There are a few key cost drivers such as labour, leasing, maintenance, empty flights or fuel hedges. Also the problem of finding places to store large numbers of aircraft is not an easy task. These account for most of the costs the industry is currently facing.
