African airlines’ passenger traffic has fallen by 65 percent due to the increasing impact of the Omicron variant of COVID-19 in 2021.
This was disclosed by the International Air Transport Association (IATA) in a new report.
The global airline body said traffic in the region fell by 65 percent in 2021.
The report states, “African airlines’ international traffic fell 65.2 per cent last year compared to 2019, which was the best performance among regions. Capacity dropped 56.7 per cent, and load factor sank 14.1 percentage points to 57.3 per cent. Demand for the month of December was 60.5 per cent below the year-ago period, a deterioration from the 56.5 per cent decline in November, owing to the impact of government travel restrictions in response to Omicron.”
It said the IATA full-year global passenger traffic results for 2021 indicated that demand (revenue passenger kilometers or RPKs) fell by 58.4 percent compared to the full year of 2019.
This represents an improvement compared to 2020, when full year RPKs were down 65.8 percent versus 2019, the report said.
It also said international passenger demand in 2021 was 75.5 percent below 2019 levels.
Capacity, (measured in available seat kilometers or ASKs), also declined by 65.3 percent, while load factor fell 24.0 percentage points to 58.0 percent, according to the IATA report.
It stated that domestic demand in 2021 was also reported to have gone down by 28.2 percent compared to 2019.
Capacity contracted by 19.2 percent and load factor dropped 9.3 percentage points to 74.3 percent.
It stated that the total traffic for December 2021 was 45.1 percent below the same month in 2019, this means an improvement from the 47 percent contraction in November, as monthly demand continued to recover despite concerns over Omicron.
