Air passenger travel results released by the International Air Transport Association (IATA) showed that African carriers attained 90.7 per cent growth in international passenger traffic year-on-year.
IATA disclosed this in a statement entitled ‘Air travel growth continues in February’ released in Geneva yesterday.
The global airlines’ body said African airlines recovered 92.3 per cent of their February 2019 revenue passenger kilometers or RPKs.
The association said industry-wide global traffic in February 2023 (measured in revenue passenger kilometers RPKs) rose 55.5 per cent compared to February 2022.
Globally, it said traffic is now at 84.9 per cent of February 2019 levels.
The report stated that domestic traffic for February rose 25.2 per cent compared to the year-ago period.
It added that total February 2023 domestic traffic was at 97.2 per cent of the February 2019 level.
Furthermore, the association said international traffic climbed 89.7 per cent versus February 2022 with all markets recording strong growth, led once again by carriers in the Asia-Pacific region.
International RPKs, it added, reached 77.5 per cent of February 2019 levels.
“Despite the uncertain economic signals, demand for air travel continues to be strong across the globe and particularly in the Asia-Pacific region. The industry is now just about 15% below 2019 levels of demand and that gap is narrowing each month,” said IATA’s director general, Willie Walsh,
Statistics from the other regions showed that Asia-Pacific airlines had a 378.7 per cent increase in February 2023 traffic compared to February 2022, maintaining the very positive momentum of the past few months since the lifting of travel restrictions in the region.
Capacity rose 176.4 per cent and the load factor increased 34.9 percentage points to 82.5 per cent, the second highest among the regions.
European carriers posted a 47.9 per cent traffic rise versus February 2022. Capacity climbed 29.7 per cent, and load factor rose 9.1 percentage points to 73.7 per cent, which was the lowest among the regions.
Middle Eastern airlines saw a 75.0 per cent traffic increase compared to February a year ago. Capacity climbed 40.5 per cent and load factor pushed up 15.8 percentage points to 80.0 per cent.
North American carriers’ traffic climbed 67.4 per cent in February 2023 versus the 2022 period. Capacity increased 39.5 per cent, and load factor rose 12.8 percentage points to 76.6 per cent.
Latin American airlines had a 44.1 per cent traffic increase compared to the same month in 2022. February capacity climbed 34.0 per cent and load factor rose 5.8 percentage points to 82.7 per cent, the highest among the regions.
“People are flying in ever greater numbers. With the Easter and Passover holidays we are expecting large numbers of travelers to take to the skies in many parts of the world. They should do so with confidence that airlines have been rebuilding resiliency that suffered owing to the pandemic.
“Other participants in the air travel value chain, including airports, air navigation service providers, and airport security staff, need to have the same commitment to ensuring our customers can enjoy smooth holiday travel,” Walsh said.
