Impact of major events on aviation: FIFA World Cup 2018

With the FIFA World Cup in full swing in Russia, we thought we would take a closer look at the impact major events can have on a country's aviation market. Russia has seen similar seat growth during the World Cup as South Africa and Brazil did, although unlike both countries the percentage of growth during the year of hosting the World Cup did not surpass the previous year's growth, in Russia's case down 4 percentage points from 17.8% in 2017. Turkey has the most capacity to Russia for the tournament, followed closely by China and France. China is focusing much more on events like the World Cup (seven of the 17 sponsors are Chinese), it is therefore not unexpected to see a large crowd from China travelling to watch the World Cup.