By Chinelo Obogo
African airlines revenue have remained low with many operators battling with cash-flow issues according to African Airlines Association (AFRAA). In a statement released on Thursday, AFRAA said that the full year revenue loss for 2021 was estimated at $8.6billion, equivalent to 49.8 per cent of the 2019 revenues. It said, across Africa in general, passenger traffic volumes remain depressed due to the unilateral and uncoordinated travel health restrictions imposed by some governments following the outbreak of the Omicron variant of covid19.
“Full year revenue loss for 2021 is estimated at $8.6billion, equivalent to 49.8per cent of the 2019 revenues. In 2020, African airlines cumulatively lost $10.21billion in revenues due to the impact of the pandemic, representing 58.8 per cent of 2019 revenues.
“As the number of people infected by the Omicron covid variant continues to increase, this has unfortunately resulted in some countries putting in place panic measures against international travel. Globally, the number of cases has reached 350 million and 10.7 million in Africa. Stringent travel advisories, insistence on full vaccination before travel, forceful vaccination at ports of arrival, repatriation of passengers not meeting entry travel requirements and quarantine of passengers at their own costs are some of the unorthodox measures being enforced by some governments. In fact, in one African country airlines are fined as much as US$3,500 per passenger for landing passengers that have not taken their second vaccination or failed to complete online health declaration forms.
“As a result of these uncoordinated measures, air passenger traffic from January to December was only 42.3 per cent compared to the same period in 2019. Capacity reached 52.7 per cent. In January 2022, the capacity is expected to inch up by 6.3 per cent to 59 per cent while air passenger traffic will see a marginal increase of 0.3 per cent from the previous month.
“Domestic market maintained the biggest share for capacity deployed though actual passenger traffic saw a dip. Domestic demand at 42 per cent, however, outperformed intra-Africa and intercontinental which remained subdued at 31.9% for intra-Africa and 25.6% for intercontinental.