Africa is said to have suffered a 93% decline in air connectivity since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Major airlines such as Ethiopia managed to buck the trend it maintained connections with 88 international destinations during the first peak of the pandemic in April 2020.
This was contained in the Connectivity Index Measure (CIM) released by the International Air Transport Association (IATA) to assess the impacts of the pandemic on connectivity by all regions of the world from April 2019 to April 2020.
According to the measure, many aviation markets in Africa such as Egypt, South Africa and Morocco that reliant on tourism were particularly severely impacted.
The measure noted that Asia-Pacific saw a 76% decline in connectivity as stronger domestic aviation markets, such as China, Japan and South Korea performed better among the most connected countries in the region.
According to the report, despite the relatively large domestic aviation market, Thailand was severely impacted perhaps because of the country’s high reliance on international tourism.
The situation was not different in Europe as the continent experienced a 93% fall in connectivity. Major European countries saw significant declines across most markets, although Russian connectivity has held up better than Western European countries.
Middle East countries saw connectivity decline by 88% with the exception of Qatar. Connectivity levels reduced by more than 85% for the five most connected countries in the region. Despite border closures, Qatar allowed passengers to transit between flights. It was also an important hub for air cargo.
In North American, connectivity declined 73% as Canada’s connectivity (-85% decline) was hit more heavily than the United States (-72%). In part, this reflects the large domestic aviation market in the United States, which despite a significant passenger decline, has continued to support connectivity.
According to IATA, Latin America was not left out as the region suffered a 91% collapse in connectivity. Mexico and Chile performed relatively better than the other most connected countries due to the timing of domestic lockdowns in these countries and how strictly they were enforced.
The CIM maintained that before the pandemic, the growth in air connectivity was a global success story. Over the last two decades the number of cities directly linked by air (city-pair connections) more than doubled while over the same period, air travel costs fell by around half.
The top-ten most connected countries in the world mostly saw significant increases over the 2014-2019 period as the United States remained the most connected country, with a growth of 26%. China, in second place, grew connectivity by 62%. Other standout performers in the top ten included fourth-place India (+89%) and ninth place Thailand (+62%).
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