The African Airlines Association (AFRAA) recently released a report on the performance of African airlines in the month of August 2021, revealing that capacity and air passenger traffic stood at 54.6% and 46.8% respectively of 2019 levels.
With regards to air passenger traffic, domestic traffic for the month under investigation stands at 58.9%, faring better than intra-African and intercontinental traffic which were recorded at 22.7% and 18.4% respectively.
As concerns restart of intercontinental operations carried out by African airlines, the continent recorded a 77.8% increase in August 2021, albeit with a parallel reduction in frequency and capacity of flight operations. The 77.8% growth in international operations represents a month-on-month increase of 3.1%.
Airlines which added new intercontinental routes to their operations in August include: Royal Air Maroc, Ethiopian Airlines and Kenya Airways. It is also worth noting that, EgyptAir, Ethiopian Airlines, Royal Air Maroc and RwandAir now operate to about 90% of their pre-COVID intercontinental destinations.
General passenger traffic remains low across Africa due to factors such as the ongoing impact of COVID-19, inconsistencies in information being transmitted concerning border closures and the inability to reconcile health protocols in some countries and across regions.
As per data available on the Africa CDC website, only about 1.85% of the entire African population has been vaccinated against COVID-19; a figure which is staggeringly low considering the high rate of spread of new variants of the virus currently in circulation.
Viewing the current situation, AFRAA predicts that African airlines will lose a whopping US$8.2b by the end of 2021, a figure which is approximately 47.2% of African airlines’ revenue for the entire 2019.
According to experts, if nothing is done soon enough, such a performance will be near-lethal to the aviation industry in the long run in light of the less-than-enthusiastic attitude adopted by governments and other stakeholders with regards to supporting the aviation and tourism sectors on the continent.
