OAG, sponsor of ABTN, has released the latest Global Airline Capacity Report, a quarterly snapshot of airline activity around the world. OAG collects data from more than 1,000 scheduled airlines daily to provide an overview of anticipated travel demands. The analysis suggests that North America's struggling air transport industry is planning its way out of a crisis, by making more effective use of capacity on flights. Whilst carriers cut domestic flights by 2%, they also scheduled 4,000 additional international flights compared with October 2004, adding more than 700,000 available seats. Globally, some of the largest increases year-over-year now occur in the budget sector. Worldwide, low cost flights are up 5% over last year, with more than 13,000 additional flights available. Currently this style of travel accounts for 12% of available flights worldwide. Within the US this market is actually down 6%, which accounts for more than 39,000 flights. However, low cost travel within the US, still accounts for the largest number of flights in the sector, with a total of 149,669 flights scheduled in October 2005.
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