Air passenger traffic for both domestic and foreign travels via Kotoka International Airport (KIA), according to the Ghana Airports Company Limited (GACL) dropped from 2.8 million in 2019 to 1.1 million at the end of 2020.
The lowest recorded total passenger traffic at KIA in two decades.
Of the total air passenger traffic, international passenger traffic fell from 2.1 million in 2019 to 702,651 in 2020, a reduction of 1.4 million travels.
Domestic traffic fell from 690,314 in 2019 to 423,718 in 2020, a decline of 39 percentage points. Combined, total passenger traffic dropped by 1.7 million representing almost 60 percent of total travels made in 2019.
The more than 1.7 million drop in travels, GACL notes, resulted in a fall in government revenue by Ghs 336 million – 64 percent fall in revenue – from Ghs 521.3 million in 2019 to Ghs 185.3 million in 2020.
The fall in passenger traffic and consequently government revenue from the sector, GACL further notes, was on the back of government’s six-month shutdown of KIA as part of efforts to control the importation of the Covid-19 virus into the country.
Also heavily affected by the pandemic-induced restrictions set out by government at KIA, was freight tonnage which measures the volume of cargo moved by air.
Recorded total freight tonnage of 43,428 tonnes for 2020 marked the lowest since 2002. Compared to 2019’s total freight tonnage of 49,846 tonnes, freight tonnage was down by 12.8 percent.
The impact of the pandemic on passenger traffic and government revenue, only mirrored the global trend, as the number of passengers boarded by the global airline industry, according to leading market and consumer data provider Statista, dropped by 61 percent in 2020 to just over 1.7 billion people.
