Last year, African airlines experienced their strongest year of passenger growth since 2012, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) has reported. Africa accounts for 2.2% of global air passenger traffic.
Passenger numbers on international flights within, and to and from, the continent, measured in revenue passenger kilometres (RPKs), and increased by 7.4%.
African airline capacity precisely matched the demand with their average load factor remaining at 67.7%. This growth in traffic was driven mainly by the strong demand on Asian and Middle Eastern routes.
Worldwide, 2016 was also a good year. Global RPKs increased by 6.3%, compared with 2015 (6% if adjustments are made for the leap year). This was significantly above the ten-year average annual growth rate of 5.5%, IATA reported.
Global airline capacity increased by 6.2% over 2015 to increase the load factor by 0.1% to 80.5% – a record full-year average high.
“Air travel was a good news story in 2016,” affirmed Alexandre de Juniac, IATA director-general and CEO. “Connectivity increased with the establishment of more than 700 new routes. And a $44 fall in average return fares helped to make air travel even more accessible.
As a result, a record 3.7-billion passengers flew safely to their destination. Demand for air travel is still expanding. “The challenge for governments is to work with the industry to meet that demand with infrastructure that can accommodate the growth, the regulation that facilitates growth and taxes that don’t choke growth. If we can achieve that, there is plenty of potential for a safe, secure and sustainable aviation industry to create more jobs and increase prosperity.” He added.
Regarding international flights, the region that saw the strongest growth last year was the Middle East, whose carriers saw their RPKs 11.8% higher than in 2015. Second came Asia-Pacific, whose airlines enjoyed growth of 8.3%.
Latin America matched Africa at 7.4%, despite the economic difficulties in Brazil, the region’s biggest market. European carriers saw an increase of 4.8% and those ofNorth America 2.6%.
Worldwide, there was a 5.7% rise in domestic air travel, while capacity increased by 5.1%, resulting in a load factor of 82.2%, which was an increase of 0.5%, compared with 2015.
The only major domestic air travel market to experience a decline was Brazil, where RPKs fell by 5.5%. However, Brazilian airlines were able to increase their load factor to 80.1%, which is the highest level since IATA started monitoring this measure in 1990.
At the other extreme, the domestic markets which saw the greatest increases were India (23.3%) and China (11.7%). Apart from these three countries, the biggest air travel domestic markets are Australia, Japan, Russia and the US.
“Our freedom to connect through air travel drives prosperity and enriches societies,” he highlighted. “That freedom can only be given its fullest expression when governments facilitate the movement of people and goods. Security and competitiveness, of course, must always be top of mind for governments.’’ The IATA chief concluded.
MIKE OCHONMA
Join BusinessDay whatsapp Channel, to stay up to date
Open In Whatsapp
