European cargo monthly: Demand on the up as peak season gets underway

It was another strong month for cargo volume growth for some of Europe’s major airline groups in October as the winter peak season gets underway.
Statistics from Lufthansa, IAG and Finnair all showed continued improved performance during the month, while Air France KLM continued to see a decrease as it adjusts capacity.
Europe’s largest airline group, Lufthansa, which earlier today announced a restructuring of its regions, recorded cargo growth of 4.8% year on year in October to 937m revenue cargo tonne km.
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This is the most cargo traffic the airline group has recorded in an October since 2011 and the fourth monthly year-on-year increase in demand in a row.
The improved demand performance and almost no change in cargo capacity led to an improvement in its load factor to 69.3% against 66.3% last year, which is its highest load factor for the month since 2014.
Breaking results down regionally, growth was led by the Asia Pacific region, up 6.3% and the Americas which improved by 4.3%.
Europe region registered a 3.6% improvement and there was a 1.2% decline for the Middle East and Africa.
The only real downside to the performance was that the level of growth has narrowed since last month’s 8.2%, a trend also reflected in IAG and Finnair figures.
IAG Cargo, which includes Aer Lingus, British Airways and Iberia, recorded a 5.9% year on year increase in cargo demand to 504m cargo tonne km, representing its second biggest jump of the year so far after September’s 6.9%. October was also the airline group’s best October figure since 2012.
Over the first ten months of the year, cargo demand is up by 3.3% against the same period last year.
Finnair registered another month of double-digit cargo growth as it continues to add new aircraft to its fleet. The airline registered a 10.7% increase in demand to 82.6m revenue tonne km.
This is the airline’s tenth year on year improvement in a row,
Capacity was up by the lower amount of 0.7% on last year and as a result its October load factor reached 67.7% from 61.6% last year.
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The news was not so great for Air France KLM, which reported a 3.5% decline in traffic to 758m revenue tonne kms.
While October is the airline’s sixth decrease in traffic in a row, the level of year-on-year percentage decline has narrowed compared with previous months.
The airline has also been removing cargo capacity, which was down by 3% year on year in October, but this was not enough to stop load factors declining to 61.9% from 62.2% last year.
During the third quarter of the year the airline completed its freighter restructuring by taking two MD-11s out of its fleet to leave it with a total of six all-cargo aircraft.
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