The top 10 non-African airlines in Africa
Africa isn’t a continent that gets a huge amount of attention for aviation, which is a shame. This year, there are over 31 million round-trip seats (non-stop and one-stop) planned from the rest of the world to sub-Saharan Africa, for instance all areas below North Africa. While Ethiopian Airlines is predictably the largest airline, we look at the top-10 non-African carriers and the largest markets.
Western Europe is crucial
With over 16.16 million seats (over half of the total), Western Europe to sub-Saharan Africa is all-important. Indeed, this one region has about twice the capacity as the second-largest, the Middle East.
Naturally, the UAE – which is responsible for the bulk of the Middle East capacity – mainly focuses on passengers transiting to Europe, Asia-Pacific, and North America. Recently, Qatar Airways said there is huge potential across the continent.
However, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, in particular, have also have strong point-to-point (P2P) demand from a good number of African countries. For the UAE, P2P demand is robust from Nigeria, Ethiopia, Kenya, South Africa, Uganda, Tanzania, and Somalia. Combined, these seven countries alone had over 1.9 million non-transit passengers in 2019, booking data from OAG Traffic Analyzer reveals.
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Top-10 sub-Saharan regional markets
Crucial to Western Europe’s dominance is Central and Western Africa, as shown below, because of so many Francophone countries (especially Senegal, Cote d’Ivoire, and Cameroon) and Anglophone nations (notably Nigeria and Ghana).
Central/Western African to Western Europe: 7.81 million round-trip seats Eastern Africa to Western Europe Africa: 5.90 million Eastern Africa to the Middle East: 5.53 million Southern Africa to Western Europe: 2.45 million Southern Africa to the Middle East: 1.86 million Central/Western Africa to the Middle East: 1.25 million Central/Western Africa to North America: 824,000 Eastern Africa to South Asia: 586,000 Eastern Africa to Northeast Asia: 471,000 Eastern Africa to North America: 328,000
Top-10 non-African airlines
Air France is the largest non-African airline to the sub-Sahara this year, analysis of OAG data confirms. It has 34 routes from both Paris CDG (33 routes) and Orly (one). Funnily enough, its sole route from Orly – the 5,802-mile link to Reunion in the Indian Ocean – is the carrier’s thickest sub-Saharan route this year. It is mainly served by high-density B777-300ERs.
Air France: 5.12 million round-trip seats British Airways: 4.41 million Emirates: 4.40 million Qatar Airways: 3.65 million Turkish Airlines: 3.63 million Brussels Airlines: 2.63 million KLM: 1.86 million Lufthansa: 1.69 million flydubai: 960,000 Corsair: 958,000
If all of Africa is considered rather than simply sub-Sahara, Air France would still be the largest non-African carrier because of its huge network to Francophone countries in North Africa (Morocco and Algeria).
Emirates would be second and Turkish Airlines third, up from fifth. Simple Flying recently took a good look at Turkish’s Africa operation this year. Saudia would be sixth and Ryanair eighth, the latter from its strong network from and bases in Morocco.
