End in sight says Emirates
17 / 05 / 2009
EMIRATES is predicting the final bottoming out of the airfreight slump in demand by the end of May.
Ram Menen (far right), divisional senior vice president cargo at Emirates, told Reuters: “We are going to see some more pain in the next three to four months. But by the end of this month, we will have seen the worst.”
Emirates, which won this year’s Cargo Airline of the Year, hasn’t released its results for the financial year ending 31 March 2009, so it remains to be seen how far it falls short of last year’s US$6.5 billion.
“April and May were not very good, but I’m hoping to see less decline in June,” Menen said.
IATA already believes that the slump has happened but the World Trade Organisation predicts global trade volumes to shrink another 10 per cent this year, which will surely have a knock-on effect to global airfreight demand.
Emirates’ current cargo load factor stands at over 60 per cent.
