Egyptian airports have made a great achievement on the level of the African continent in passenger traffic and air cargo, as Cairo International Airport and two other Egyptian airports topped the list issued by the Airports Council International (ACI) for the first ten African airports in terms of passenger traffic in 2021.
Cairo Airport also came in second place in cargo traffic while Hurghada Airport ranked fifth, and Sharm el-Sheikh Airport came in eighth place among the top ten African airports in terms of the number of passengers, according to the statistics of the Airports Council International.
Minister of Civil Aviation, Mohamed Manar, congratulated all workers in the aviation sector for the achievement, expressing his appreciation for their great efforts despite the difficult conditions experienced by the air transport industry due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Manar pointed out that the Egyptian airports’ network is witnessing a great development with new airports being constructed, and old ones being modernized, beside strengthening the security and safety systems at all airports, developing the cargo village and modernizing the air cargo fleet.
Eleven Egyptian airports obtained and renewed the certificate of safe health travel from the Airports Council International, which contributed to increasing tourist traffic to Egypt and strengthened its position on the map of the world’s favorite tourist destinations, Manar said.
Cairo Airport ranked first in Africa in terms of passenger numbers, with 11.3 million passengers, exceeding the number of passengers of the airports of South Africa, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Morocco and Kenya, while Hurghada Airport came in the fifth place with 4.9 million passengers, and Sharm el-Sheikh Airport ranked eighth on the list with almost 4.6 million passengers.
In the field of air freight, Cairo Airport came in second place in Africa with cargoes weighing 333,536 tons, after Jomo Kenyatta Airport in Kenya, which came in first place.
The total passenger during 2021 in African airports recorded 114.8 million, an increase of about 49.4 percent over 2020, and the air freight movement reached 2.2 million tons of goods, an increase of 11.6 percent over 2020.
The number of passengers carried around the world reached 4.6 billion in 2021, an increase of 28.4 percent over 2020, and the global air cargo movement reached 125.3 million tons of goods, an increase of 15.4 percent over 2020.
