Risky Roads a Boon for Airlines in War-Ravaged South Sudan
- Local carriers see rising demand as gunmen target highways
- Domestic-flight passengers increased five-fold in past year
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Ayaak Deng’s first-ever flight let her skip over a hundred miles of bloodily contested South Sudan and visit family she hadn’t seen in a year. It’s the kind of trip that’s revitalizing small airlines that initially struggled because of the almost four-year civil war.
The airport in the capital, Juba, has recorded about 1,000 domestic passengers a day this month, more than five times the average in the first half of 2016, before a peace deal collapsed and gunmen began targeting vehicles plying the main roads. Dangers on the highways are fueling the popularity of flights to places such as Deng’s central hometown of Bor, even as the oil-producing East African nation battles an economic crisis and mass hunger.