African airline travel slumps again

African airlines endured another month of declining demand, as traffic dropped 1.1% in March 2015 compared to a year ago.

The weakness reflects adverse economic developments in parts of the continent including Nigeria which is suffering from the collapse in oil prices and South Africa which is suffering from gross economic mismanagement.
However, reductions in capacity of 3.2% pushed the load factor up by 1.4 percentage points to 65.7% but African airlines continue to post the lowest load factors of all the regions covered by the International Air Transport Association (IATA).
For all other regions except Africa, underlying traffic trends confirm demand remains robust. Internationally, March capacity rose 5.6% and load factor climbed 1.3 percentage points to 80.0%.