Aviation » Safety & Security

An average of 29548 passengers arrives in Polokwane International every year since 2006, while about 29485 departs from the facility every year. As can be seen below, the movements have been very steady since 2006, not increasing too much and not decreasing much. These statistics includes all travellers on scheduled domestic, non-scheduled domestic, regional and international flights.

It can be seen from the bar chart shown below that scheduled domestic flights carry majority of the passengers to Polokwane International airport while passengers coming in unscheduled flights are on the minority. It is also interesting to note from the percentage distribution chart shown below that 80% of the passengers travel in 30% of the aircrafts. Passenger movements as expected are dominated by those travelling in scheduled domestic flights.

This is extremely vital information to know for planning purposes.

Seasonal Indicators

Seasonal indices for passenger movements present a very beautiful picture of the amount of people 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 passenger movements on a monthly basis and again this is vital information for planning purposes.

The power of these indices is that if there is abundant historical data, they have an ability to filter out anomalies caused by once-off events like the Soccer World Cup while they will correctly reflect annual activities like school holidays.

The one agreement between the arrival and departure passenger indices is that there is a clear deep in January which could be because of all the business travellers which are still on holidays.

Regional departures shows a distinct peak in August while the arrivals show three peaks in July, August, and March, the reason behind these peaks are not that clear at the moment.

Passenger movements at Phalaborwa airport are expected to be dominated by those travelling in scheduled flights majority of them being business people mainly going to the mines situated in the area. The airport's runway is limited to aircraft with a seating capacity not exceeding 29 passengers. The airport is owned by Phalaborwa Airport (Pty) Ltd in which AIRLINK has ownership rights. The airport offers AIRLINK operated daily scheduled flights from OR Tambo and it is mainly used by mining executives and the SANDF. A picture of the main terminal building is shown below.

Passenger Movements Seasonal Indicators

Monthly indicators of the movements of passengers 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.

It is estimated that Hoedspruit airport handles more passengers than Phalaborwa but currently there is no data available to prove this fact. During a visit to the airport, it was evident that this could be true. There was far many people that we observed than at Phalaborwa and they also operate a flight to Capetown as shown below.

Lephalale airport has a single scheduled flight from Lanseria in Johannesburg which carries about 29 passengers monday to friday. This flight alone carriers about 60 people daily in and out of Lephalale, excluding other unscheduled flights which are known to occur.