Africa air passenger traffic up by 7.5% in 2017 – IATA

The International Air Transport Association (IATA) yesterday released 2017 passenger traffic results, saying African traffic rose by 7.5% compared to 2016.

Capacity rose at less than half the rate of demand (3.6%), and load factor jumped 2.5 percentage points to 70.3%.

According to the figures released yesterday, while indicators in South Africa are consistent with falling economic output, Nigeria has returned to growth, helped by the recent rise in oil prices.

However, Nigeria may not have been a beneficiary of the growth as a report released by the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) showed that traffic growth declined by 26 per cent compared to 2016.

The global figure of revenue passenger kilometers (RPK) for the year ended 31 December rose 7.6% compared to 2016, according to IATA.

This, according to the organization, was well above the 10-year average annual growth rate of 5.5%.

While the rate of demand growth slowed to 6.2% in December 2017, compared to December 2016, largely owing to less favourable comparisons to the even stronger growth trend seen in the year-ago period.

Full year 2017 capacity rose 6.3%, and load factor climbed 0.9 percentage point to a record calendar-year high of 81.4%.

Asia-Pacific led the regional charts with 9.4 per cent growth followed by the European carriers.

IATA’s Director General and CEO, Alexandre de Juniac, who was quoted in the report, said “2017 got off to a very strong start and largely stayed that way throughout the year, sustained by a broad-based pick-up in economic conditions.”