The global peak air travel season ended with demand at a high point, according to a year-on-year analysis for September 2024 by the International Air Transport Association (IATA).
The association represents about 330 airlines comprising more than 80% of global air traffic.
African airlines reported an 11.9% year-on-year increase in demand for passenger airline travel in September 2024.
The passenger airline travel of African airlines increased by 6.6% year on year over the same period and the load factor rose to 76.0%, which is a 3.6 percentage point increase compared with September 2023.
Globally, passenger airline demand, measured in revenue passenger kilometres was up 7.1% compared with September 2023, an all-time high for September.
The level of demand is good news for a sector which only a few years ago was almost ground to a halt because of lockdowns during the Covid-19 pandemic.
IATA director-general Willie Walsh said the increase was good news for the global economy.
“Every flight creates more jobs and trade. But the air travel success story is bringing challenges. We will soon face a capacity crunch in some regions which threatens to curtail these economic and social benefits,” Walsh said.
“Governments will face a choice: lose out to more dynamic nations who value global connectivity, or forge a consensus for sustainable growth.
“Airlines are making significant investments to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. That needs to be accompanied by an equally active political vision, backed up by actions, to ensure we have efficient and sufficient airport and air traffic management capacity to meet the needs of citizens and businesses to travel.”
Global air cargo markets continued to show strong annual growth in demand with total demand, measured in cargo tonne-kilometres, rose 9.4% compared with September 2023 levels for a 14th consecutive month of growth.
Capacity, measured in available cargo tonne-kilometres, increased by 6.4% compared with September 2023. This continued to be largely related to the growth in international belly capacity, which rose 10.3% — extending the trend of double-digit annual capacity growth to 41 consecutive months.
African airlines saw a 1.7% year-on-year demand growth for air cargo in September, the slowest among the various regions in the world.
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