False claims about the size and changing fortunes of African airlines have been circulating online for years. The privately owned Air Peace is doing well, but it’s not Africa’s largest.
MARY ALEXANDER • 5 MAY 2024
Published by Africa Check on 7 May 2024
A list of “Africa’s Largest Airlines by Number of Passengers Annually” has been circulating on social media since 12 April 2024.*
Air Peace, a privately owned carrier based in Nigeria, tops the list. It’s just ahead of the continental giant Ethiopian Airlines.
Here’s the list, with flags indicating the airlines’ countries:
- Air Peace [Nigeria] -14 million passengers
- Ethiopian Airlines [Ethiopia] – 13.89 million passengers
- Air Algerie [Algeria] – 7.2 million passengers
- EgyptAir [Egypt] – 6.4 million
- Kenya Airways [Kenya] – 5 million
- Royal Air Maroc [Morocco] – 5 million
- South African Airways [South Africa] – 4.6 million
- Tunisair [Tunisia] – 2.474 million
Air Peace is the only airline on the list that isn’t partly or wholly state-owned. It’s a regional carrier that mostly serves West Africa, but is also said to fly to Jeddah in the United Arab Emirates, Mumbai in India and London in the UK.
The airline has recently been in the news, with safety concerns, fraud and money-laundering charges in the US and a libel case against investigative journalists in Nigeria.
The list can also be seen here, here, here, here, here, here and here. But is it accurate?
What’s the source?
The first sign that the list is bogus is that it gives no source for the stats.
The African Airlines Association’s (Afraa) 2023 annual report, its most recent, lists passenger numbers for 2022 provided by the airlines themselves. This paints a different picture:
- Ethiopian Airlines: 11,327,000
- EgyptAir: 8,200,000
- Safair: 6,649,000
- Royal Air Maroc: 5,684,000
- Air Algerie: 4,681,000
- Kenya Airways: 2,728,000
- Air Peace: 2,636,000
- Air Mauritius: 1,112,000
More recent Afraa estimates for the first quarter (Q1, or January to March) and second quarter (Q2, or April to June) of 2023 are similar:
(Source: African Airlines Association and OAG. “Traffic” refers to passenger traffic, as opposed to freight or cargo traffic.)
Other publicly available data is from Cirium, an aviation analytics company. Here are the first eight on its list of scheduled seats on African airlines for the 12 months to May 2023:
- Ethiopian Airlines: 21,330,678
- EgyptAir: 13,907,772
- Royal Air Maroc: 9,273,308
- Safair: 8,569,941
- Air Algerie: 7,871,598
- Kenya Airways: 8,071,408
- Airlink: 4,740,769
- Tunisair: 4,121,442
Another way to measure the size of an airline is the size of its fleet. Afraa’s annual report includes the number of planes carriers owned in 2023. Here are the top eight:
- Ethiopian Airlines: 129
- EgyptAir: 82
- Airlink: 67
- Air Algerie: 55
- Royal Air Maroc: 50
- Kenya Airways: 32
- Air Peace Limited: 20
- Tunisair: 17
None of these lists put Air Peace at the top, although the Nigerian carrier is clearly one of Africa’s major airlines.
All false claims that affect people’s perceptions and choices are harmful. Africa Check has previously examined false claims about the size and changing fortunes of African airlines.
* Some claims posted on Facebook and Instagram may have been deleted by users after being rated via Meta’s Third-Party Fact-Checking Program.