Title: Commercial air transport in Africa: changing structure and development of country pairs

Authors: Sören Eriksson; Bengt Söderlund

Addresses: Norrahammar, Sweden ' Department of Economics, Lund University, Sweden

Abstract: This study investigates cross-border commercial air passenger traffic in Africa, focusing on the development of the 15 busiest country pairs during the period 1989 to 2015. It explores dimensions not previously studied by using ICAO's 'Traffic by Flight Stage' (TFS) and data from the CEPII Gravity Dataset. The spatial results show on an uneven geographical distribution of country pairs with the centre of gravity to South, East and North-East Africa, with one long-distance corridor between Egypt and South Africa. Countries in North and West Africa have rather few linkages, except for Egypt. Central African countries are not represented among the 15 country pairs. Although the number of passengers and the rank among the countries have shifted, South Africa and Egypt stand out, as having most country pair connections. Factors such as changing economic, diplomatic and political relations have had an influence on changing country pair connections throughout the period. A number of variables were selected to investigate how they correlated with Africa's commercial passenger traffic. Of the seven variables selected, five did show on a correlation and two did partly so. In that view, Africa's air traffic follows rather typical patterns.

Keywords: transport geography; Africa aviation; commercial aviation; aviation networks; aviation geography; aviation country pairs; aviation hubs.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSTM.2024.138147

International Journal of Services Technology and Management, 2024 Vol.29 No.1, pp.59 - 75

Received: 20 Dec 2021
Accepted: 22 Mar 2022
Published online: 30 Apr 2024 *

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