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By Chinelo Obogo
The International Air Transport Association (IATA) released its November 2025 passenger traffic analysis on Thursday, showing that Africa recorded the lowest passenger load factor globally,
The report showed that globally, international air travel remained robust, with a 7.7% increase in Revenue Passenger Kilometers (RPK) and a record-high November load factor of 84.0%.
Africa has an 11.2% demand surge outpacing all other regions, including the Middle East (9.6%) and Asia-Pacific (9.3%). This growth, coupled with a 8.5% capacity increase, pushed the continent’s load factor up by 1.8 percentage points to 74.3%.
Despite this progress, a 74.3% load factor, meaning that nearly 26% of available seats flew empty, places Africa far behind other regions. Asia-Pacific and European carriers operated at 85.8% and 85.6% load factors respectively, while North America, achieved 81.0%.
Asia-Pacific and Europe sustained load factors above 85%, showing managed capacity and high demand, while the North America region’s growth is modest at 4.0%, its market scale and efficiency remain substantially higher than Africa’s.
The Middle East and Latin America regions posted strong growth and load factors above 81%. “The African growth story is real and encouraging, highlighting rising economic and travel demand. However, the persistently lower load factor reveals underlying challenges.
It points to market fragmentation, intense competition on key routes, and potentially a mismatch between capacity deployment and the most profitable traffic flows. Infrastructure and cost constraints also continue to hamper optimization,” IATA said.
