Flight Friday: Europe’s Narrowbodies Up, Regional Jets Down Since 2019

As the industry turns its attention to the 2025 edition of the Paris Air Show, this week’s Flight Friday examines European operators’ flight cycles, excluding Russia’s, compared to 2019, revealing a notably uneven post-pandemic recovery across different aircraft classes.

The narrowbody market demonstrates the strongest performance, with May 2024 flights up almost 5% compared to 2019 levels, supported by a 9% increase in the in-service fleet.

When comparing 2025 to 2019, the fleet is up 13% and flights are up almost 9%. With continued deliveries of Airbus A321neos into the European fleet, these aircraft are flying slightly fewer cycles but longer hours, as airlines like Aer Lingus, Iberia, and TAP deploy them on transatlantic routes.

Regional turboprops show remarkable resilience, achieving a 4% increase in flights compared to 2019 despite a 15% reduction in fleet size. This suggests turboprop operators are extracting greater utilization from their remaining aircraft, though on slightly shorter sectors.

The widebody segment returned to positive territory in 2024 and continues to make progress, with flight cycles now almost 3% higher than in May 2019. This recovery is supported by an 8% expansion of the in-service widebody fleet since May 2019, reflecting renewed confidence in long-haul markets.

The regional jet market presents a stark contrast, experiencing substantial contraction, with the in-service fleet in Europe down by over 20%. This has resulted in a corresponding decline of over 20% in monthly flight cycles.

With no Embraer E175 orders in the pipeline and no plans to certify the Comac C909 in Europe, this segment’s fleet size and monthly utilization will likely continue its downward trend.

This data was put together using Aviation Week’s Tracked Aircraft Utilization database.