Book Early and Off-Peak – Seat Capacity Down by 9.2%

We’re not kidding here at Cheapflights when we recommend you book early, and try to fly on off-peak days - Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and after noon on Saturdays. The number of domestic airline seats has plummeted by 9.2 percent for the fourth quarter of 2008 compared to the same period last year. So says an analysis by Official Airline Guide (Web site: www.oag.com). More than ever, that makes locking in discount airfares a matter of finding the fares first – while they’re still available.

“The scale of the decline in the U.S. market is worse than the previous schedule analysis showed,” says Steve Casley, OAG CEO. He says United States carriers are “taking 265,000 flights out of operation this quarter. When you consider that the combined cuts from all the world’s airlines totals 451,000 flights, then it really puts America’s domestic capacity declines into perspective.”

Driving OAG’s revised numbers, says Casley, is the “dynamic nature of the airline industry, compounded by significant economic turmoil in the global financial markets.” Worldwide, seating capacity has slipped by 5 percent according to OAG. “However,” he says, “With economic problems now impacting both Europe and Asia this picture could change quickly as airlines are extremely vulnerable and quick to react to economic downturns and subsequent shifts in market demand.”

Previously, even as airlines cut domestic U.S. capacity, a number of them were actually forging new overseas routes especially to world economic hot spots such as China, India, and, most recently, Brazil.

Working in favor of airlines not cutting routes wholesale is this: the price of oil has plummeted along with the stock markets. This is alleviating some of the burden on carriers in terms of operational costs.

© Cheapflights Ltd Jerry Chandler