35% of the fleet of African companies remains grounded
The effects of the Covid-19 pandemic continue to disrupt air traffic. As everywhere else, African airlines are struggling to recover from this crisis, which led to a loss of 14 billion USD in passenger transport in 2020.
As of February 1, 35% of the African fleet was nailed to the ground.
Of the 1,290 aircraft in operation in Africa, only 837 are in service against 453 grounded, reports Ch-aviation in its statistical data published on February 12. According to the airline intelligence specialist, Ethiopia has the highest percentage of aircraft in operation, both on the continent and globally. With 104 aircraft currently in service, the East African country leads the way with 90.43% of the active fleet.
In contrast, Nigeria, Africa's leading economic power, is the country with the lowest labor force participation rate. Out of 105 planes identified by the West African giant, only 38 are currently in service; globally, it is the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland which prance in the top of the countries with the highest percentage of inactive planes.
There are 528 planes on the ground (69.66%) out of a total of 758. Hong Kong (68.02%), Nigeria (63.81%), Malaysia (59.19%) and Austria (57, 89%) complete the list. Conversely, Ethiopia is followed by China (89.76%), Taiwan (89.6%), Japan (87.2%) and Brazil (86.29%) in the ranking of countries showing the highest fleet activity rate.
