Air cargo has best quarterly performance since 2010

WorldACD has hailed the final three months of 2016 as the best quarter for air cargo since 2010.
The analyst said that demand during the final quarter of last year in weight terms increased by 7.5% year on year, helped by a 9.4% improvement in December.
“Contrary to previous years, the origins Europe and North America recorded strong December business, at a par with the top month October,” WorldACD said.
“In line with the demand for perishables, Africa and Latin America peaked in December. Asia Pacific stuck to its pattern of November being the best month of the year.”
The analyst said that the December figures were helped by Christmas falling on a Sunday, meaning extra business days, but added it still would have been “difficult to predict the exceptional year-over-year performance” registered during the month.
Yields in dollar terms for the quarter improved by 6% compared with the third quarter of the year, although this improvement was aided by rising oil prices.
For the full year, chargeable weight increased by 3.1% year on year even though demand growth in the first quarter was affected by the strong performance in 2015, linked to US west coast sea port strikes.
Earlier today, IATA released statistics showing a traffic increase of 3.8% for the year in freight tonne km terms.
If the effect of the port strikes is stripped out of the figures, full year demand would have improved by 4.4%.
Weighted average yields on westbound traffic on six main trade lanes fell from $2 per kg in 2015 to $1.75 per kg in 2016.
In the eastbound direction, those same six lanes saw a decline from $1.93 per kg to $1.63 per kg last year.