Cape Town - African Airlines have continued their strong upward trend in travel since mid-2015, the International Air Transport Association (Iata) said on Tuesday.
African airlines saw January traffic jump 12.1% compared to January 2015. According to Iata, this continues the strong upward trend in travel since mid-2015 that coincides with a jump in exports from the region over the same period. With capacity up 8.2%, load factor rose 2.5 percentage points to 71.3%.
At the same time Africa only accounted for 2.2% of the total passenger traffic market shares by region of carriers in terms of RPK for the full year 2015, according to Iata. Asia-Pacific (31.5%) had the largest market share, followed by Europe (26.7%), North America (24.7%), the Middle East (9.4%) and Latin America (5.4%).
Iata's latest report on global passenger traffic for January 2016, found that globally, demand - or revenue passenger kilometres (RPKs) - rose 7.1% compared to January 2015. This was ahead of the 2015 full year growth rate of 6.5%. January capacity rose 5.6%, with the result that load factor rose 1.1 percentage points to 78.8%, the highest load factor ever recorded for the first month of the year.
“January maintained the strong traffic growth trend seen in 2015, showing the resilience of demand for connectivity despite recent turmoil in equity markets. The record load factor is a result of strong demand for our product and airlines making the most productive use of their assets," said Tony Tyler, Iata’s director general and CEO.
"Underlying conditions point to another strong year for passenger traffic, with the latest decline in oil prices likely providing additional stimulus for air travel growth.”