African airlines record rise in passenger, cargo markets-IATA

African airlines saw an 84.8% rise in revenue passenger kilometres (RPKs are the standard industry measure of demand) versus a year ago; increased passenger capacity by 46.7%

This is coming as they achieved a 15.5 percentage point increase in the average passenger load factor (the proportion of available seats taken up by fare-paying passengers) which climbed to 75.0%, the lowest of all regions worldwide.

Also, they retained a 1.9% share of the global airline passenger travel market. Worldwide, demand for air travel continues to recover and is now at 74.6% of pre-COVID levels while domestic passenger markets are recovering faster (now at 86.9% of July 2019 levels) than international markets (which have reached 67.9% of July 2019 levels).

Domestic travel represents a 62.3% share of the airline passenger market. International travel represents 37.7% of the airline passenger market

All these were unfolded by the International Air Transport Association (IATA)  on its latest analyses of the airline passenger and air cargo markets respectively, based on traffic data for July 2022.

In the air cargo market, during July, African airlines: saw cargo volumes decrease by 3.5% compared to July 2021. This was significantly slower than the growth recorded the previous month (5.7%), reduced their cargo capacity, which was 2.2% below July 2021 levels, and retained a 1.9% share of the global air cargo market.

Wole Shadare