Ebola-Zone Airline Capacity to Outside World Declines Up to 81%

BLOOMBERG by Chris Jasper and Simeon Bennett                                                                          Dec. 15, 2014

The number of airline seats on offer between Liberia, the African nation with the most deaths from the Ebola outbreak, and the outside world has dropped 81 percent in the past year, according to official capacity figures.

Seat availability to Sierra Leone will be 75 percent lower in January than it was a year earlier, while the total for Guinea will be down 39 percent, flight scheduling database provider OAG said today in a report.

Kenyan health officials prepare to receive arriving passengers at an observation area at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Nairobi on Oct. 28. The number of flights in the Ebola zone has plummeted after outside carriers scrapped services in response to the spread of the disease... Photographer:Tony Karumba/AFP via Getty Images

“In the countries where Ebola has been concentrated, the outlook for 2015 is bleak,” said OAG, which holds future and historical flight details for more than 900 airlines and 4,000 airports. “The drop in airline capacity for these countries looks much more profound.”

The number of flights in the Ebola zone has plummeted after outside carriers scrapped services in response to the spread of the disease...

Chief among carriers retaining services to the Ebola region is Belgium’s Brussels Airlines NV, which provides the only timetabled services to all three disease-ridden nations.

Air France (AF) is the only other European carrier serving the region, with flights to Conakry in Guinea, though it abandoned trips to Freetown in Sierra Leone in August.

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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-12-15/ebola-zone-airline-capacity-to-outside-world-declines-up-to-81-.html