Flight Friday: Regional Jet Utilization Takes Off In Post-Pandemic Africa

This week’s Flight Friday focuses on Africa, investigating how each aircraft class—narrowbody, widebody, regional jet and regional turboprop—are being utilized when compared to an equivalent pre-pandemic month.

The data shows that there has been a large amount of growth in Africa’s regional sector. On aggregate, regional jets are up almost 500% when compared to an equivalent pre-pandemic month. As the data is aggregated flights, some of this increase is a function of increased fleet size. The regional jet fleet has grown by 50% between early 2020 and early 2026.

With an increase in the number of Mitsubishi CRJ and Embraer regional jets (both E170/E190 and ERJ145 families), that has more than compensated for the reduction in older aircraft, such as the BAe 146.

Regional turboprops have also seen a modest increase in in-service fleet (ISF), led in part by the addition of ATR and De Havilland Canada Dash-8 aircraft.

However, we have also seen an increase in ADSB-equipped aircraft, so that also adds/inflates the number of flights found in our tracking data compared to 2019. But the net result is still an increase in utilization.

The narrowbody sector has seen double-digit increases for operators in the region. Again, some of this can be attributed to an uptick in ISF, which is around 15%, but with figures in some months 25% greater than that, it also suggests that operators are using these aircraft more.

The widebody market has remained reasonably stagnant and remains at pre-pandemic levels. The widebody ISF is up a dozen or so aircraft; however, what we have seen is a modernization of aircraft doing the flights. With the decrease of Boeing 767s, Airbus A330s and A340s, these aircraft have been replaced with the more modern and efficient 787s and A350s, helping to create a “greener” fleet mix.

This data was put together using Aviation Week’s Tracked Aircraft Utilization database.