The International Air Transport Association (IATA) recently released its 2025 World Air Transport Statistics (WATS) report. While global commercial aviation posted solid momentum, marked by a boom in premium-class travel, emerging market surges, and fleet modernisation, the data underscores a stark regional imbalance: no African country made the world’s top 10 air passenger markets.

Unlike single-country behemoths like the US (890.1m) or China (776.1m), Africa’s air traffic is divided across 54 sovereign markets with limited cross-border consolidation.

The United States cemented its position as the world’s largest market with 890.1 million arriving and departing passengers, followed by China at 776.1 million. Meanwhile, African nations remained absent from the top tiers despite recording strong internal demand and route recovery.

The top 10 global passenger markets—incorporating domestic, arriving, and departing international travellers—were dominated by North American, Asian, and European giants.

Countries with highest passenger numbers include United States with 890.1m passengers, China (People’s Republic of) with 776.1m passengers, United Kingdom with 269.7m passengers, Spain with 252.7m passengers, Japan with 223.5m passengers, India with 218.2m passengers, Italy with 187.3m passengers, Germany with 163.8m passengers, France 152.6m passengers, and Turkey 129.3m passengers.

Beyond the primary country rankings, WATS 2025 highlights key structural shifts reshaping global aviation.

Sluggish implementation of the Single African Air Transport Market (SAATM) keeps intra-African airfares high, suppressing domestic passenger volume, stakeholders have always pointed out.

Jet A-1 fuel premiums in African hubs remain 20–40 percent above the global average due to logistics bottlenecks, squeezing regional carrier margins and limiting fleet growth.

For African markets to break into global passenger rankings, experts have suggested that policymakers must accelerate regional market integration, eliminate protectionist air service agreements, and lower aviation user fees to unlock latent domestic demand.

International premium-class travel (Business and First Class) reached 109.7 million passengers globally in 2025 (+4.5 percent YoY), accounting for 5.5 percent of all international travellers. Europe held the largest overall volume with 39.7 million premium travellers.

Related News

Latin America recorded the fastest percentage surge in premium demand, jumping 22.1 percent to 4.0 million passengers.

North America (10.4 percent) and the Middle East (9.5 percent) saw the highest relative proportion of premium passengers compared to overall regional traffic.

While mature markets like the US (+1.6 percent) and France (+2.2 percent) posted single-digit growth, emerging corridors experienced double-digit spikes: Kazakhstan: +40.0 percent YoY (18.1 million passengers). Uzbekistan: +16.9 percent YoY (12.5 million passengers). Vietnam: +14.8 percent YoY (80.9 million passengers).

Asia-Pacific dominated the world’s busiest airport pairs, holding nine out of the top 10 global domestic routes. Jeju–Seoul Gimpo (CJU-GMP) retained its rank as the world’s busiest route with 13.3 million passengers.

Africa: Cape Town – Johannesburg (CPT-JNB) was the continent’s busiest pair at 3.4 million passengers.

Latin America: Bogotá – Medellín (BOG-MDE) led with 3.5 million passengers.

Europe: Barcelona – Palma de Mallorca (BCN-PMI) led with 2.1 million passengers (Stockholm–Malmö was Europe’s fastest-growing route, up +85 percent to 271,031).

North America: New York JFK – Los Angeles (LAX) led domestic routes (2.2m), while JFK – London Heathrow (LHR) led international connections (2.1m).

The data also show that over the past six years, newer, more efficient widebody aircraft have taken to the skies. The Boeing 787 (+40.8percent) and Airbus A350 (+117.4 percent) recorded significantly more flights in 2025 than in 2019. By contrast, the Airbus A380 showed a considerable decline in usage, operating 24.4 percent fewer flights in 2025 than in 2019.

Narrowbody aircraft from Boeing and Airbus maintained their position as the most used aircraft in 2025. Boeing 737 aircraft (including all variants) operated 10.8 million flights in 2025, up 12.0 percent from 2024. This was followed by the Airbus A320 with 8.7 million flights and the Airbus A321 with 4.2 million flights.

Ifeoma Okeke-Korieocha is the Aviation Correspondent at BusinessDay Media Limited, publishers of BusinessDay Newspapers. She is also the Deputy Editor, BusinessDay Weekender Magazine, the Saturday Weekend edition of BusinessDay. She holds a BSC in Mass Communication from the prestigious University of Nigeria, Nsukka and a Masters degree in Marketing at the University of Lagos. As the lead writer on the aviation desk, Ifeoma is responsible and in charge of the three weekly aviation and travel pages in BusinessDay and BDSunday. She also overseas and edits all pages of BusinessDay Saturday Weekender. She has written various investigative, features and news stories in aviation and business related issues and has been severally nominated for award in the category of Aviation Writer of the Year by the Nigeria Media Nite-Out awards; one of the Nigeria’s most prestigious media awards ceremonies. Ifeoma is a one-time winner of the prestigious Nigeria Media Merit Award under the 'Aviation Writer of the Year' Category. She is the 2025 Eloy Award winner under the Print Media Journalist category. She has undergone several journalism trainings by various prestigious organisations. Ifeoma is also a fellow of the Female Reporters Leadership Fellowship of the Wole Soyinka Centre for Investigative Journalism.

Join BusinessDay whatsapp Channel, to stay up to date

Open In Whatsapp