Flight Friday: In Europe, Widebodies Recover, Narrowbodies Soar

With Aviation Week Events MRO Europe coming up in Barcelona, Spain, Flight Friday looks at how Europe is faring compared to 2019.

Immediately after the onset of the pandemic, widebodies and regional turboprops didn’t drop as low in equivalent 2019 utilization compared to narrowbodies and regional jets. The regional turboprop market, which is generally but not exclusively operated on domestic flights, started its recovery in the summer of 2020. By the end of 2020, the regional turboprops operated over 50% of their pre-COVID flights. By summer 2023, recovery to approximately 90% had been achieved, and since then the levels have remained reasonably constant. The regional turboprop in-service fleet is around 10% lower than 2019 levels, with well-publicized failures of regional airlines, like flybe, since 2019 partly to blame.

The return of the regional jet class, on the other hand, has been sluggish. With 50% equivalent utilization not gained until summer 2021, the regional jets continued to have a lower utilization. Since summer 2023, the levels have been just below 80% of 2019, mainly due to the removal of almost 150 regional aircraft from the European in-service fleet. Some of this is due to some of these aircraft moving into other markets like Africa. The other reason is due to the retirement of some of these aircraft in favor of “upgauging” into bigger aircraft at a slightly lower frequency by operators. Utilization of this class is not expected to get back up to 100% with only Embraer and Comac still building regional jet-sized aircraft.