Africa accounted for 1.9 per cent of the total world passenger air travel market in May 2022, the International Air Transport Association reports.
In the IATA’s latest analysis of demand for passenger air travel worldwide and by region which is based on traffic data collected during May 2022 as compared to same period in the previous year, African airlines recorded a 134.9 per cent rise in Revenue Passenger Kilometres flown.
In the same analysis, the IATA pointed out that African Airlines increased capacity by 78.5 per cent and also achieved a 16.4 percentage point rise in the average load factor per flight, taking it to 68.4 per cent. The IATA however noted that this was the lowest among all regions worldwide.
IATA’s Director General, Willie Walsh, said, “The travel recovery continues to gather momentum. People need to travel. And when governments remove COVID-19 restrictions, they do. Many major international route areas – including within Europe, and the Middle East-North America routes – are already exceeding pre-COVID-19 levels.
“Completely removing all COVID-19 restrictions is the way forward, with Australia being the latest to do so this week. The major exception to the optimism of this rebound in travel is China, which saw a dramatic 73.2 per cent fall in domestic travel compared to the previous year. Its continuing zero-COVID policy is out-of-step with the rest of the world and it shows in the dramatically slower recovery of China-related travel.”
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