Critical airport worker and capacity shortfalls in Africa that threaten to keep flights and passengers grounded and impede the continents’ economic recovery can be rapidly and affordably addressed with the adoption of trusted, secure cloud-based solutions, according to SITA, the air transport industry IT and communications systems provider.
Recent experiences in the UK, Australia and other parts of the world exposed airports inability to cope with the surge in demand for air travel as countries are opened up and begin to put the COVID-19 pandemic behind them.
“As the recovery of Africa’s air transport market currently lags many bigger markets by a year, there is a golden opportunity for cash-strapped airports, including smaller provincial and regional facilities, to take pre-emptive steps and future-proof their operations to ensure they do not become transport and economic choke-points as they ramp-up. They can achieve this by digitalising their various passenger processing systems,” said Hani El Assaad, SITA’s President for Africa and the Middle East.
Such processes include health status verification, check-in, and boarding.
Although commercial airline traffic to, from and within Africa is still below half of 2019 levels, the recovery is already under way and accelerating. According to the airline trade body, IATA, African airlines reported a 91.8 per cent increase in demand for air travel this March compared with the same month last year and an improvement on the 70.8 per cent growth seen in February.
“With so many skilled and experienced people having left the industry during the pandemic, the clock is ticking for airports to ensure they are ready and able to meet the ever-increasing volumes of travellers, their luggage and cargo shipments. The solution is for all airports – from mega-hubs to small municipal and regional facilities — to digitalise and automate time-costly processes like passenger processing and baggage handling. Agile cloud…
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