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Freight lagging behind passenger surge: ACI report

AIRPORTS Council International (ACI) has said in its April report that global trends in air freight are less optimistic than for passengers, reports London's Air Cargo News.

It pointed out that while passenger traffic surged by 3.4 per cent in April and 6.2 per cent for the year to date, worldwide air freight volumes grew one per cent in the month and declined by 0.1 per cent for the year to date.

A rise of only 1.3 per cent was seen in Asia-Pacific, although in Europe it was a more robust at 5.4 per cent.

At the same time, many of the world's freight hubs contracted. Out of top 20 air freight hubs, seven airports reported growth rates of one per cent or less. With air freight highly concentrated and the top 20 air freight hubs occupying almost half of global volumes, the weak growth among the major airports pulls down the global growth figure, ACI added.

Significant air freight volume losses were seen at Istanbul-Ataturk (-5.5 per cent, or -3,800 tonnes), Paris-Orly (-17.7 per cent or -2,000 tonnes) and Izmir (-76.2 per cent or -1,800 tonnes).

In Asia-Pacific there were pronounced falls at Jakarta (-35.2 per cent or -17,000 tonnes) and Kuala-Lumpur (-15.6 per cent or -10,000 tonnes).

In Latin America-Caribbean, the largest air freight volume declines were observed at Rio de Janeiro-Galeao (-44.3 per cent or -3,900 tonnes) and Viracopos (-14.1 per cent or -2,200 tonnes) in Brazil.

The Middle East as a whole saw robust air freight growth of 4.9 per cent including a rise of 19.1 per cent (+22,600 tonnes) at Doha and Dubai (+4.8 per cent or +9,700 tonnes) but this was offset by declines at Sharjah and Abu Dhabi.

At the country level, estimates point to an increase in air freight traffic of 3.7 per cent in the US, 3 per cent in China and just 0.3 per cent in Japan, while Germany and India remain promising with 4.6 per cent and 4.5 per cent growth respectively.