4 June 2024
In Case You Missed It (ICYMI)
15 July 2024
Is the pilot shortage easing?
Contrasting news on the skills shortage in the aviation industry. Flying magazine reports that US airlines are slowing up on pilot hiring. There are signs that recruitment is meeting demand, but also that the delays in the Boeing pipeline mean fewer pilots are needed.
American Becomes Latest Airline to Halt Pilot Hiring - FLYING Magazine
Mechanics are still in short supply
In other Flying news it seems that the shortage of aviation mechanics is showing no signs of being alleviated. It cites Boeing, who suggest that the global industry needs to recruit and train 610,000 new maintenance technicians by 2041.
The Aviation Mechanic Shortage Is Worse Than You Might Think - FLYING Magazine
We take a look at what you can do to manage this generation gap in our blog on:
How Can Aviation Bridge the Skills Gap?
04 June 2024
Latest research* predicts a rise in the global commercial aircraft disassembly market.
The global market is estimated at US$6.4 Billion in the year 2023 and is projected to reach a revised size of US$9.7 Billion by 2030. This is a CAGR of 5.3% over the analysis period 2023-2030.
Narrow Body is expected to record 5.6% CAGR and reach US$6.6 Billion Wide-Body is estimated at 4.9% CAGR for the next 8-year period.
The U.S. Market is Estimated at $1.9 Billion, While China is Forecast to Grow at 4.8% CAGR
Within Europe, Germany is forecast to grow at approximately 4.3% CAGR.
Encouraging news as it’s a slightly shorter timeframe than the KMPG Report we cited in the last newsletter, although the CAGR is not as high. KPMG said: ‘The global commercial aircraft disassembling, dismantling, and recycling market is projected to grow to over USD14 billion by 2032, a CAGR of almost 8%’.
Aviation in Europe is showing some capacity softening.
Routes Online has reported numbers which show a softening from the post-Covid travel of the last year or so in Europe. Based on schedules filled by airlines, capacity recovery in Europe fell in the first quarter of this year. This report suggests that the improving trend of Europe RPKs as a percentage of 2019 volumes may be flattening off.
The question is whether this will indicate a similar trend for traffic. Is traffic now returning to being mainly GDP-driven?
Some key stats:
Official inflation data for the EU shows that the price of passenger air travel grew by just 2.5% year-on-year in Dec-2023.
The UK's air transport inflation was only 0.8% in Dec-2023, after falling from a peak of 44.1% in the 12 months earlier.
In 2019 international seats accounted for 75.7% of all capacity in Europe, whereas this grew to 77.0% in 2023.International capacity is much more important than domestic capacity in the European market.
Is the uptick in post-covid travel levelling out?
The Financial Times is reporting ‘normalised demand’ in US travel as post-pandemic travel eases off. This seems to be in leisure travel, rather than business. Southwest Airlines’ RASM was at the low end of the forecast for Q1.
However, the US Travel Association expects and uptick of 7% in business travellers taking domestic trips. It compares this to a likely 1.9% for leisure travellers.
The FT expects this gap to continue. It cites Delta Air Lines and Hilton Worldwide as two companies with international reach catering to business travellers. Both have ‘outperformed their group peers’ in the last year.
Are part-outs up or down in 2024?
We’re servicing a bigger mix of aircraft than ever before with disassemblies at ecube expected to be up by the end of the year.
We’re doing more and we’re doing it differently.
We talk about disassembly, where other companies offer ‘teardown’. Our aim is to reverse manufacture an aircraft, so that as many precision parts as possible can be returned to the flying fleet. We discuss this in our blog When Parts Are At A Premium Here’s Why Disassembly Is More Than Just Teardown
In contrast to recent comments in Aviation Week, we’re seeing more part-outs to support the flying fleet. We’re enabling airlines and lessors to keep their aircraft in the air for longer, because we can renew them with precision parts. This helps aircraft to come out of storage and be transitioned back into the fleet.
19 April 2024
The Potential For Aircraft And The Circular Economy
KPMG says the circular economy in aviation is ‘a concept whose time has come’. In its report on Circularly in Flight, published in March, it looks at:
- How airlines can achieve their ESG goals
- The expected size of the market in the next decade
- The rate of retiring aircraft by 2038
- The need for industry collaboration to effect meaningful change.
We give our own analysis on these ideas here and the full report can be downloaded from their website here https://kpmg.com/ie/en/home/insights/2024/03/circularity-in-flight-fs-aviation.html
Passenger Numbers Up, But Can Airlines Keep Pace?
Cirium released its latest research in March. It shows the rise in passenger numbers, but Kevin O’Toole (Chief Strategy Officer) also asks an important question about whether airlines can respond while supply remains slow?
‘The ongoing recovery in Asia should help to keep world traffic moving upwards through 2024. The bigger question is perhaps whether airlines will be able to keep supply and demand in balance, especially as the input costs continue to rise. Going in to 2024, analysis of the Cirium forward-looking schedule suggests that capacity growth remains modest at around 4% for the year and likely to run a point or two behind demand, as it has during 2023.’
How Will The P&W Issues Affect The Industry?
Our CEO, Lee McConnellogue takes a look at the issues at Pratt & Whitney. Does its affect on the industry depend on where you sit? Do grounded aircraft tend to be more of an issue for airlines that rely on market share?
You can read Lee’s thoughts here: How Will The P&W Issues Affect The Industry? | LinkedIn
There’s also more on this issue in Aviation Week.