Intra-Africa air travel to lead global growth through 2050 — IATA

The International Air Transport Association (IATA) released its Long Term Demand Projections (LTDP) for air travel, showing that global air passenger demand is expected to more than double by 2050 and intra-Africa air travel would lead global growth through the period.

The pace of growth will be uneven across regions, reflecting differences in demographics, market maturity, economic development, and connectivity potential.

Under the mid range scenario, Asia Pacific and Africa are expected to be the fastest growing regions over 2024-2050, with CAGRs of 3.8 percent and 3.6 percent respectively. Europe and North America are projected to grow more slowly, at 2.5 percent and 2.8 percent.

The LTDP identifies the fastest growing markets as intra Africa (4.9 percent), Africa–Asia Pacific (4.5 percent), Asia Pacific–Middle East (3.9 percent), intra Asia Pacific (3.9 percent), and Africa–North America (3.8 percent), highlighting the importance of investment in aviation infrastructure and regulatory frameworks in developing regions. By contrast, several Europe centered markets are among the slowest growing.

Globally, under the mid range scenario, demand is forecast to reach 20.8 trillion revenue passenger kilometers (RPKs), based on a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 3.1 percent (2024-2050) from the 9 trillion RPKs seen in 2024.

A higher growth scenario would see a 3.3 percent CAGR with passenger demand reaching 21.9 trillion RPKs in 2050. A lower growth scenario would see 2.9 percent CAGR with passenger demand reaching 19.5 trillion RPKs by 2050.

The different scenarios are driven by alternative modeling of long-term economic growth, populations, aviation fuel price trends, the global energy transition, and air transport supply-side capacity development.

“The outlook for air travel is positive. People want to travel and, under all our modeled scenarios, the demand to fly is expected to more than double by mid-century.

“That is good news for global economic and social development because aviation growth will catalyze opportunities, including jobs, around the world. Our Long-Term Demand report gives governments, industry, and energy suppliers a robust basis for long term planning.

“It underscores the need for policy frameworks to support key success enablers such as efficient infrastructure development, market access facilitation, regulatory harmonization, and an effective clean energy transition,” said Willie Walsh, IATA’s Director General.