Aviation » Aircraft Movements

Aircraft movements at Polokwane International for the period 2006 to 2010 are presented here, the arrival and take-off movements are well balanced as can be seen but have been in steady decline since 2007. An average of 4196 aircrafts arrives at Polokwane international every year since 2006 and 3834 departs from the facility every year.

The movements comprises of Scheduled Domestic, Non-Scheduled Domestic, Non-Scheduled Regional, and Non-Scheduled International. As expected, Non-Scheduled Domestic movements dominate.

The raw data used in producing the graphics in this section are presented in the STATISTICS page.

It will seem there has been a steady decline in aircraft movements at Polokwane International since 2006 as shown above, although there is some recovery that begins in 2010. The data as shown above includes both scheduled and non-scheduled flights, domestic, regional and international.

A more informative picture of the movements for the various sectors is shown in the chart below which clearly shows that non-scheduled domestic flights dominant the movements at Polokwane probably because of general aviation contribution, which is followed by scheduled domestic flights as can be expected. Regional and international movements remain low but steady during this period. From the chart shown below, it can be seen that the steady decline in the total aircraft movements shown above at Polokwane is purely driven by non-scheduled domestic flights

The spread between the various flight sector movements can be clearly seen in the charts shown in the charts below.

 

It is clear from the above charts that non-scheduled domestic flights dominate all aircraft movements at just over 40%, followed by scheduled flights at around 30% which increased from 25% in 2006.

Aircraft Movements Seasonal Indicators

Seasonal indices for aircraft movements present a very beautiful picture of the amount of activity that can be expected in each month of the year. An index of "1" for a particular month indicates average movements while anything above "1" is above average and less than "1" is below average movements. The indices presented here tell a story of the behaviour/patterns of aircraft movements which subsequently informs us about people/cargo movements since aircraft move people and cargo.

For arrival movements, there seems to be a general peaking in September and a deep in January which is consistent for all types of flights as shown below. Non-scheduled regional movements displays two distinct peaks in August and November and a deep in January like the rest.

Non-scheduled international movements show double peaks in June and September as well as two deeps in November and January. The peaks and deeps represent a period of sharp increase or decrease in movements as a result of many factors, mainly seasonal activities like school holidays. The cause of these peaks and deeps is one of the main factors to be sought after for planning purposes.

Aircraft movements at Phalaborwa airport are presented here for the period 2009-2011. Unfortunately the data does not distinguish between arriving and departing aircrafts, it is all inclusive. Although there are two daily scheduled AIRLINK flights, it is expected that the unscheduled movements will be in the majority.

Aircraft Movements Seasonal Indicatorss

Monthly indicators of the movements of aircrafts at Phalaborwa airport are presented below, they also confirm december as the most quite month in the year, this is in line with the pattern at other airports.

Statistical records of aircraft movements at Hoedspruit airport could not be found nut it is known that SA EXPRESS operates two daily flights from Johannesburg and one from Cape Town. A flight schedule is shown below.

Lephalale airport is currently an unmanned airfield but sources based at the facility say there is one scheduled daily flight from Johannesburg (Lanseria) from monday to friday and a three times a week unscheduled flight.