OAG, the company that tracks airline capacity across the entire globe, takes a look at the situation of Brazil and the World Cup in its 2014 monthly report.
OAG notes that the decision not to base the group stages of the World Cup in geographic clusters but instead spread them between 12 cities distributed across the country, means teams and fans will need to travel huge distances to attend the group stage matches. Inevitably air travel will be perceived as the most convenient option for travelling between games in cities which are 1,500 miles apart or more.
Fans of the French national team, for example, are likely to arrive into Rio or Sao Paulo on one of Air France’s services and find themselves travelling just over 2,000 miles around Brazil to attend the France group stage matches in Porto Alegre, Salvador and Rio de Janeiro.
The good news, OAG notes, is that for those fans embarking on a 2014 World Cup adventure, Brazil has a well developed domestic air network, the fourth largest in the world after the USA, China and Japan. In March 2014, there will be 10.5m domestic seats available in Brazil. Moreover, there is also a well established low cost carrier market which – in normal circumstances – would mean fans should be able to expect competitive fares. Brazil has the second largest domestic low cost carrier network in the world, as measured in airline seats, with 6.1 million seats available on low cost carriers in March. This compares to 21.9 million low cost seats in the US, the largest low cost carrier market.
Comparing potential demand for air travel with seat capacity in March 2014, OAG says there will be a total of 6 million one-way seats available between the 12 host cities. The largest routes, not surprisingly, are between some of Brazil’s largest cities – Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Brasilia.
Considering all available seats between the 12 host cities in March 2014, 60%, or 3.6m, of these seats are from or between Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Brasilia. In contrast Cuiaba and Manaus, possibly the two least accessible cities among the 12 hosts, will each offer fewer than 100,000 departing seats in March 2014.
To the dismay of football fans, OAG says that Brazil’s carriers do not intend to significantly increase capacity in June and July to accommodate the influx of football fans and associated additional traffic that the World Cup will bring.
Whilst the Brazilian CAA has authorised carriers to operate nearly 2,000 additional flights during the World Cup, a look ahead to this June and July in OAG’s Schedules Analyser shows that Brazil’s domestic seat capacity is currently down 0.5% in June (v’s last June) and down 3% in July (v’s last July and flights are expected to be 0.3% higher and 8.1% lower in June and July respectively. This is consistent with the continuing trend in Brazil of carriers trimming capacity. There is still time for carriers to add extra flights into their schedules in June and July, but as yet, there is no sign of them doing so.
Download the full report here.
World Cup: The Guide 