African airlines are forecast to earn just $1.30 per passenger in 2026, against a global average of $7.90, as industry leaders meeting in Johannesburg call for deeper regional cooperation, liberalised airspace, and coordinated policy to rescue a continent whose aviation demand is rising faster than its airlines can profit from it.
STAFF REPORTER · LESOTHO TRIBUNE
Africa’s aviation leaders gathered in Johannesburg last month for the 14th Aviation Stakeholders Convention, jointly hosted by the African Airlines Association (AFRAA) and South African Airways (SAA), under the theme “Resilient African Aviation: Partnerships, Empowerment, Profitability.” The three-day event drew more than 500 delegates from airlines, regulators, airport authorities, financiers and technology firms across nearly 50 countries.
The convention was opened by South Africa’s Minister of Transport, Barbara Creecy, who underscored her government’s commitment to positioning South Africa and the continent as a leading force in global aviation. Her remarks carried particular weight in a region where the aviation sector faces structural pressures that risk undermining the passenger growth gains of recent years.
The central tension framing the Johannesburg gathering was one familiar to any observer of African aviation: a continent whose air travel demand is growing faster than almost anywhere else in the world, yet whose airlines remain among the least profitable on the planet. Africa’s carriers are collectively forecast to generate a net profit of just $200 million in 2026, representing a margin of $1.30 per passenger. The global average stands at $7.90 per passenger, according to figures cited at the convention by IATA Regional Vice President for Africa and the Middle East, Kamil Al-Awadhi.
“Africa’s aviation sector stands at a pivotal moment. Rising demand is real. The structural barriers constraining profitability are equally real. Bridging that gap requires coordinated action across governments, regulators and industry.”
Industry executives at the convention identified a cluster of interrelated causes for the profitability gap: multiple and inconsistent regulatory frameworks across African states, high jet fuel costs relative to global benchmarks, thin route economics on intra-African corridors, and slow progress in implementing the Single African Air Transport Market (SAATM), the continent-wide air liberalisation framework that was adopted in principle at the African Union level but has been unevenly ratified and applied by member states.
For Southern Africa specifically, the debate has direct implications for smaller economies that depend on a handful of regional carriers for connectivity. Lesotho, served primarily by Airlink out of Maseru’s Moshoeshoe I International Airport, sits at the narrow end of the profitability distribution: a thin-route market where the economics of scheduled service are perpetually marginal and where any deterioration in the broader regional aviation environment translates quickly into reduced frequency or outright route suspension.
The SAA-Kenya Airways partnership, in operation since 2021, was cited at the convention as a model for the kind of bilateral commercial cooperation that can improve viability on shared routes. The arrangement has allowed both carriers to share traffic between their Johannesburg and Nairobi hubs, and South Africa’s reciprocal removal of visa requirements for Kenyan travellers was credited with generating the additional demand needed to make the partnership commercially meaningful. Delegates argued that this model, combining commercial partnership with enabling policy, needed to be replicated across more corridors.
Airlink, Southern Africa’s most active regional carrier, announced separately in May that it would launch the first non-stop service between Cape Town and Zanzibar in October 2026, operating the route with its new Embraer E195-E2 aircraft. The Cape Town-Zanzibar launch is the latest in a series of network expansions by Airlink, which took delivery of its first E195-E2 aircraft in January 2026. The E195-E2, configured for 136 passengers in a two-by-two cabin layout, offers meaningfully lower seat-mile costs than the older Embraer 135s that form the backbone of the airline’s regional fleet, and analysts have suggested that the new aircraft type could improve the economics of thinner routes across the SADC region.
The profitability challenge raised at the Johannesburg convention is compounded by the external environment facing Southern African aviation in mid-2026. Oil price volatility, trade disruption from ongoing tariff disputes, and, most recently, a wave of flight cancellations linked to civil unrest in South Africa have each added to the operational uncertainty facing carriers operating in the sub-region.
For Lesotho, whose inbound tourism and business travel depends almost entirely on the reliability of connections through OR Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg, disruption at the South African end of any route is not an abstraction. When South African aviation catches a cold, as the convention’s economists noted, smaller connected markets develop pneumonia.
The AFRAA convention’s three-day programme addressed the profitability gap through high-level plenaries, panel discussions, masterclasses and bilateral business sessions. The back-to-back staging of the 3rd African Aviation Safety and Operations Summit from 19 to 20 May added a regulatory and safety dimension to the proceedings, reflecting the growing consensus that financial sustainability and operational safety are not competing priorities but mutually reinforcing ones.
The next major gathering for the southern African aviation industry will be AERO South Africa, scheduled at Lanseria International Airport from 10 to 12 June 2026. The sixth edition of the general aviation trade show will bring together exhibitors from South Africa and internationally, covering maintenance, aircraft sales, technology, and airspace management, and is expected to draw stakeholders from across the SADC region.
Whether the industry’s coordinated ambitions translate into measurable gains in intra-African connectivity, and whether smaller markets such as Lesotho see tangible benefits in the form of improved frequencies and sustainable route economics, will depend on the speed with which governments convert the Johannesburg convention’s declared commitments into ratified policy.
