If the average continues over a full year the airport is likely to reach only 23 percent of the 300,000 passengers needed for it to be able to breakeven financially.
That shortfall amounts to 230,000 passengers per year.
In the first
four months of its operation since October 2014,
the airport, formerly known as Sikhuphe, saw 11,388 passengers arrive and 11,952
depart. If these figures remain consistent across a full year a total of 70,020
passengers would have used the airport. This total is in line with the 60,000
to 70,000 passengers per year that used the Matsapha Airport, which King Mswati
III Airport replaced.
According to official Swazi Government figures, King
Mswati III Airport needs at least 300,000 passengers per year to breakeven financially.
The airport opened
in March 2014 but only received its first commercial
flights the following October. The only airline to use the airport has been the
part-government-controlled Swaziland
Airlink. No other airline has said it will use KMIII which
was built in a wilderness about 70km from the main towns of Mbabane and
Manzini.
In October 2013 a report from the International
Air Transport Association (IATA) said the airport was widely
perceived as a ‘vanity
project’ because of its scale and opulence compared with the
size and nature of the market it seeks to serve. The airport was built on the
instruction of King Mswati who rules Swaziland as sub-Saharan Africa’s last
absolute monarch. No needs analysis was completed before building began.
The Airport took more than 10 years to build and
opened at least four years behind schedule.
In 2003, the International
Monetary Fund said the airport should not be built
because it would divert funds away from much needed projects to fight poverty
in Swaziland. The full cost of the airport is not known, but estimates have put
it at E2.5 billion (US$250 million).
About seven in ten of King Mswati’s 1.3 million
subjects live in abject poverty, with incomes less than US$2 per day, three
in ten are so hungry they are medically diagnosed as malnourished
and the kingdom has the highest rate of HIV infection in the world.
In an analysis
of the airport’s future, published in March 2014, the Open
Society Initiative for Southern Africa (OSISA) said there were still many
serious questions about the sustainability of the airport including, ‘how will
it lure additional airlines to use its services, how will it compete with the
airports in Johannesburg and Maputo, and will it ever get close to its full
capacity of 360,000 passengers each year - which is more than five times as
many as currently used by the existing airport at Matsapha’.
The passenger figures were released by the Swaziland
Tourism Authority and published in the Observer Sunday,
a newspaper in effect owned by King Mswati.
According to the newspaper, ‘On average, arrivals at
KMIII International Airport have been averaging over 1,000 [per month] since it
started operating; 1,698 in October, 1,693 in November and 1,405 in December
while outbound passengers recorded were 587 in October, 826 in November and 401
in December.’
It added, ‘According to data compiled by the
Swaziland Tourism Authority (STA) in collaboration with the Department of Immigration,
in January [2015] an unprecedented 10,138 passengers left Swaziland through
KMIII while 6,592 arrivals were recorded.’
The newspaper, which was called a
‘pure propaganda machine for the royal family’
by the Media Institute of Southern Africa in a report on media freedom in the
kingdom, gave no explanation for the apparent nine-fold increase in passenger
numbers in a single month between December 2014 and January 2015.
See also
PROOF: KING’S AIRPORT POINTLESS
AIRPORT MOVE WILL ‘BANKRUPT AIRLINK’
No comments:
Post a Comment