Air cargo growth strengthens in March

Air cargo demand growth continued to impress in March with double-digit percentage growth on the back of modal shift and consumer product launches.
The latest figures from analyst WorldACD show that demand in chargeable weight terms increased by 14.6% year on year – numbers not seen since the recovery years of 2009/2010.
WorldACD said that business was particularly upbeat from Hong Kong, Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou, London, Milan, Frankfurt and Chicago, which all improved by more than 20%.
“Contributing elements seemed to be sea-to-air shifts and the launch of new consumer products. A few other factors also helped to realise this unusual year-on-year growth,” the analyst said.
“Especially in Europe, volumes tend to be lower around Easter − last year Easter was in March, this year in April. Also, March 2017 had one more Friday, usually one of the top cargo days, than March 2016.”
Without these two factors, the March 2017 YoY growth would have been around 11%.
“We expect that April will be another very good month, but − in view also of the Easter-effect − year-on-year growth may stop around 10%.”
With regards to dollar yields, there was an improvement of 5.1% compared with January and 1.7% year on year.
WorldACD figures show that in January and February combined, air cargo demand in weight terms improved by 6.3% on 2016 levels.