The number of Americans coming to Europe has undoubtedly increased this summer, with the United Kingdom taking the top spot among the most popular destinations in the region, as travel advisors in particular know.
OAG, short for Official Airline Guide, has now published an eye-opening market analysis of the record-breaking numbers for transatlantic flights between the United States and Western Europe during this summer season.
According to OAG, air travel between the United States and the continent was one of the first long-haul markets to recover after the pandemic. Most airlines quickly resumed these routes. Considering that the market was completely devastated by COVID-19 just three years ago, the data and analytics firm called the destination’s level of recovery “quite remarkable.”
In assessing the industry’s development since the beginning of the pandemic, OAG attributed Transatlantic travel’s recovery to, “A combination of family connections, Florida thrill seekers, London shoppers, and even modest business travel,” noting that, “For many, crossing the Atlantic is no longer a ‘long-haul’ [undertaking], but a chance to binge on a Netflix series and avoid the wi-fi.”
According to the latest information from the OAG Schedules Analyser, about 111,400 planned flights from Western Europe will arrive in the United States in the summer of 2023, or about 530 per day, and it is likely that a comparable number will depart in the opposite direction.
Looking back ten years, 80,416 transatlantic flights were scheduled between the U.S. and Western Europe in the summer of 2013, representing a nearly 40% increase in air traffic between the two regions over the past decade.