Flights are about to take off again. International flight bookings to Arlanda in July and August have skyrocketed, according to a recent compilation of booking data.
”"We assess that there will be a strong recovery now but from very low levels," says Carl Bergkvist, business policy expert at the Stockholm Chamber of Commerce.
The Chamber of Commerce has compiled data from the airline industry's cooperative organization IATA, which provides forward-looking information on flight bookings from IATA's coordinated reservation system. The compilation shows that during April and May this year, bookings for travel to Arlanda in July and August increased by 1,993 percent compared to 2020.
”"We can see that the pressure to travel is enormous. We have twenty-fold increases in bookings," says Carl Bergkvist.
During April and May this year, a total of 42,294 bookings were made to Arlanda during July and August, according to IATA's system. This compares with 2,021 during the same period last year.
The forward-looking compilation does not include bookings made directly with the airlines, and some other bookings are also omitted. However, historical comparisons made between IATA's statistics and Swedavia's historical data show a strong correlation, according to Carl Bergkvist.
The fact that the comparison figure is so extreme is of course due to the fact that bookings during April and May last year for the period July and August were almost non-existent. Bookings are still 70 percent lower than the corresponding period in 2019. At that time, the total number of bookings during the said period amounted to 139,353.
”"It will remain low as long as we have active infection spread around the world, but this is an indication that there is a pent-up travel need that people are realizing as the vaccination rate increases," says Carl Bergkvist.
He believes that the trend is so clear now that it is possible to speak of a significant recovery.
”"We don't know how fast the recovery will be, but it will probably be faster than many expected," says Carl Bergkvist.
