Air cargo demand on the up in June

Air cargo volume growth improved in June as demand at European airlines remained strong and there was a pick-up for Asia Pacific carriers.
Analyst WorldACD said that, after a poor start to the year, worldwide chargeable weight improved by 2.7% year on year in June.
WorldACD said that the uptick was caused largely by a strong showing for the Asia Pacific region, which saw incoming traffic for the month increase by 7.1% and outgoing traffic up by 6.6% on a year earlier.
“Europe as a destination continued to do well [up 4.8% year on year], but Africa and Central & South America fell back, in incoming as in outgoing air cargo volumes,” the analyst said.
“With a drop of almost 11%, African imports were particularly hard hit. North America performed on average, while the region Middle East & South Asia (MESA) was lacklustre with a performance below the other areas in the northern hemisphere.”
Looking at individual product categories, most grew in line with the overall trend, but pharma demand was up 10%.
“Thanks to this growth [in pharma], with yields well above average, the overall US dollar-yield in June remained stable,” WorldACD said.
For the second quarter of the year, demand was up 2.1% on last year, with smaller country pairs out growing the top 100 origins and destinations.
“Twenty-one of these top-100 grew by more than 10%. India figured in six of these twenty-one country pairs, China East and Germany in five, and Hong Kong in four.
“As far as destination areas are concerned, growth was only recorded for Asia Pacific and Europe, both over 5%.”
The analyst also took a look at the effect of additional belly capacity on load factors.
WorldACD said: “Bellyhold capacity grew most from MESA to Europe [up 6.8%], but a good part of that capacity growth was taken up by cargo carried [up 4.9%]. In the other direction, the figures were an increase of 5.3% and 2.2% respectively.
“For Europe to North America, however, the picture was more worrisome: a bellyhold capacity growth of 5.5% combined with a volume decrease of 1.5%.
“The result was slightly better in the other direction, i.e. from North America to Europe, where bellyhold capacity grew by 3.2% and cargo carried in the bellyhold dropped by 0.7%.”
For the routes between MESA and Europe, more than half of the airlines reporting capacity data to WorldACD, notched up a higher volume growth than capacity growth for the bellyhold, thus improving their cargo loadfactors on their passenger aircraft.
For the routes between North America and Europe, the picture was quite different: only 20% of the airlines reporting improved their cargo loadfactor on passenger aircraft.