Over the past few years, ever-escalating tensions and geopolitical rifts between Europe and the United States and Russia, as well as its close ally, China, have also affected aviation in various ways.
Without mentioning aircraft-related issues, including Western lessors’ assets that are stuck in Russia, one problem that has been affecting carriers on the Western side of the geopolitical block was that they could no longer access Russia’s airspace following the country’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Since then, Western allies have banned Russian airlines from entering their airspace, with the latter immediately repaying the favor.
As a result, European and US airlines have largely avoided adding flights to China and Hong Kong, while airlines based in these regions have outpaced the growth of their Western counterparts, adding more frequencies year-on-year (YoY) in 2024.
Uneven growth
Looking at data from the aviation analytics company Cirium, 15 Europe and US-based airlines, excluding Russian carriers, have scheduled 234 weekly flights to China and Hong Kong in August.
In comparison, these airlines had 173 weekly itineraries to China and Hong Kong in August 2023, representing a 35.3% growth in flights YoY.
However, only three airlines have added more than ten flights to their networks to China and Hong Kong YoY.