Lagos among top unserved Africa flight routes, Airbus study shows

• Potential high for direct Lagos-New York, -Toronto, -Houston, -Manchester

• New York City most underserved route from Africa to North America

• Again, Air Peace’s planned New York entry offers opportunities

Business a.m. Reporter, with wire reports

Compiling origin and destination (O&D) data from December 2022 to November 2023, a major study by aircraft manufacturer, Airbus, has identified Lagos, Nigeria as one of Africa’s top unserved flight routes.

The in-depth study shows unserved routes to, from, and within Africa building on Airbus’s Global Market Forecast published late last year.

Apart from Lagos, other African cities identified with unserved flight routes are Cape Town, Nairobi, Dakar and Douala, which were each found to have several unserved routes at the top.

Airbus said it defined several categories of unserved routes, including routes with no previous nonstop service or routes that previously had nonstop service but were paused and never resumed, which it found by looking at origin and destination (O&D) traffic to see where people travelled to and from and which city pairs could be sustained with their own service.

Per report in Simple Flying, most of the unserved pairs are flights connecting Africa to other continents, as intra-African flights have fewer numbers.

The study shows West Africa to have the most unserved routes, with nine of 15 shown in the study involving the region. Eleven of the 15 are routes that were served before they were cut years ago, and four were in operation up to 2022.

Geert Lemaire, market intelligence and consulting director, at Airbus said: “With our capacity to make analyses about route and network development potential in-house, Airbus remains committed to partnering with airlines across Africa to identify optimised fleet solutions in line with network development requirements that further stimulate the continent’s air transport industry growth and improve connectivity for travellers.”

The Airbus study identified routes that have the potential for direct service with a view to stimulating African air travel growth, sources within the aircraft manufacturer explained.

In the case of Lagos, four routes out of Africa and one route within Africa were identified to have this potential. Outside of Africa, the Lagos-New York, Lagos-Houston, Lagos-Toronto, and Lagos-Manchester routes have been identified to have the potential for direct service, while intra-Africa, Cape Town-Lagos, is seen to have similar potential.

In a breakdown of the specific routes involved, London was identified as the very first, described as one of the most connected cities in the world, which makes it not a surprise.

Per Simple Flying, the Airbus’ study identified Harare, located in Zimbabwe as the city on the other end, and noted that from December 2022 to November 2023, almost 5,000 passengers flew from Harare to London and nearly 4,000 in the opposite direction. It also showed that the three carriers that transported the most passengers between the two cities were Emirates, Qatar Airways, and Ethiopian Airlines.

The report found that the second route involves a city in India, one of the fastest-growing markets in the world, and stated that Johannesburg-Mumbai was next on the list. According to the Airbus study, in 2019, the number of passengers flying between the two cities was higher, but in the period covered for the report, more than 3,000 passengers flew in each direction. Some 45 percent, the vast majority, flew through Addis Ababa, the study found.

By Airbus’s determination, launching a nonstop service between Johannesburg and Mumbai would help to regain the remaining 25 percent of traffic that has not been met since the pandemic. South African Airways and Jet Airways are known to have served this route in the past.

The study also revealed that New York City is one of the most underserved routes from Africa to North America. According to the findings, before the pandemic, around 5,000 passengers flew between the two cities monthly, with 25 percent connecting through Heathrow in London.

But it also found that the numbers have still not reached their pre-pandemic levels, but with around 3,000 passengers flying each way during the study period.

According to the study’s findings, nearly 3,000 passengers flew on an even spread of airlines from December 2022 to November 2023 with Ethiopian Airlines carrying most passengers despite not flying to New York.

It found that Ethiopian Airlines carried 20 percent, Delta Air Lines had 18 percent, and Virgin Atlantic had 16 percent. Twenty-five percent of passengers transited through London Heathrow (LHR), while 16 percent went to New York  through Lome Tokoin Airport in Togo and 11 percent through Atlanta.

The complete list of paired routes in the Airbus’s study are: Harare-London;Johannesburg-Mumbai; Lagos-New York; Lagos-Toronto; Entebbe-London; Lagos-Manchester; Cape Town-Brussels; Durban-London; Nairobi-Washington; Lagos-Houston; while the intra-African city pairs are Dakar-Libreville; Abidjan-Douala; Abuja-Nairobi; Cape Town-Lagos; Dakar-Douala.