Audrey D’Angelo
International business travel on African routes continued to rise in March, according to the latest International Air Transport Association (Iata) survey.
It showed that business class and first-class travel between Africa and the Middle East rose by 40.3 percent year on year and between Africa and the Far East by 13.8 percent.
But these large comparative increases in March were because the routes had recovered from the disruption caused in the Middle East by the Arab Spring and in Japan by the earthquake and tsunami in 2011.
However, premium travel also rose by 20.2 percent on routes within Africa, reflecting growing prosperity and investment in some parts of the continent and an increase in routes flown by SAA and competing foreign airlines. It rose by 11.6 percent between Africa and Europe.
Iata economists say that although the March growth rates were exaggerated when compared with those affected by the events of a year ago, total air travel still looked strong.
The survey read: “The rate of growth in the total premium market worldwide has been increasing at an annualised rate of more than 6 percent compared with annual growth of 5 percent last year.
“Premium travel is largely driven by business travel, whose indicators have looked positive for several months now.
“Growth in trade of developed countries declined throughout 2011, similar to the year-on-year growth rates in premium traffic. But that has changed in the past six months. Trade growth has shown improvement since the last quarter of 2011 and premium travel has started to grow at a faster rate over the same period.”
The performance of economy class travel was also strong, with “annualised growth of 7.5 percent between January and March”.
Growth in air travel on routes affected by the events in the Middle East and Japan was promising. Both premium and economy travel across the North Atlantic were strong in March compared with a year ago, consistent with positive economic indicators from the US and Germany.