The latest market analysis from OAG reveals a significant surge in global airline capacity for October 2025, with total capacity projected to reach 529 million seats, an increase of 20 million seats compared to October 2024. This represents a robust year-on-year capacity growth of 3.9%, outpacing the 2.4% growth recorded last month.
Airline Performance: United Adds Most Frequencies, Turkish Airlines Shows Fastest Growth
United Airlines has distinguished itself by adding the most extra frequency among the Top 20 carriers, increasing its flights by 7,000 compared to October 2024. Delta Air Lines closely followed, adding 6,800 frequencies.
Meanwhile, Turkish Airlines demonstrated the fastest growth rate this month, soaring by 14.9% and adding 4,900 flights for a total of 37,600 flights in October.
Conversely, some European and South American carriers saw declines:
Lufthansa recorded a 5.0% decrease.
Azul experienced the largest rate of decline at 10.0%.
Market Dynamics: USA Dominates Domestic, International Traffic Strong
The USA remains the world’s largest domestic market this month, offering 92.1 million seats—19.5 million more than China. However, China’s domestic market recorded the biggest volume growth among the Top 10, adding 2.7 million more seats year-on-year to reach 72.5 million seats.
Other markets exhibiting significant growth (above 5%):
Brazil increased by 6.5%.
Canada grew by 5.1%.
In contrast, Indonesia’s domestic market capacity is down by 6.3%, and Japan also saw a reduction.
The Spain – UK route continues to be the largest international country pair with 5.3 million seats. The Germany-Turkey country pair, however, recorded the largest volume growth.
Regional Performance and Outlook
Strong capacity increases were observed across several regions:
Southern Africa is forecasted to record the strongest growth among IATA regions, up 12.5% compared to last year.
North East Asia and Western Europe recorded the largest volume growth, both increasing capacity by 4.6 million seats.
However, some regions saw slight declines:
The Caribbean is down by 0.4%.
Upper South America saw the most significant regional decline, down 1.4%.
Globally, 732 airlines are operating worldwide this month, serving 3,948 airports.
