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Signs emerge of slowing cargo volume growth among European airlines

AIRFREIGHT volume growth slowed at European airlines IAG Cargo, Lufthansa and Air France KLM in October. However, Finnair managed to buck the trend of weakening growth.

Lufthansa Cargo's air freight volume rose by 2.4 per cent year on year in October to total 973 million revenue cargo tonne kilometres, representing the carrier's lowest year-on-year growth percentage since August in 2016. October's growth also trails behind the carrier's traffic increase over the first 10 months of 2017 of 7.1 per cent.

However, the airline did record a higher load factor in October of 70.9 per cent, up from 70 per cent a year ago as capacity was up by just one per cent, London's Air Cargo News reported.

IAG Cargo's cargo volume in October rose by 4.8 per cent year on year to reach 527 million cargo tonne kilometres. This growth percentage is lower than the year-to-date figure of 6.2 per cent and is the lowest growth rate registered since May 2017.

Air France KLM's air cargo traffic rose by 1.2 per cent year on year in October to 766 million revenue tonne kilometres, below the group's year-to-date rate of 1.3 per cent but an improvement on September's performance.

The airline's traffic figures for the year were affected by a slimming down of the KLM freighter fleet. At the end of June 2016, it operated four Boeing 747-400Fs and two MD-11s, however, by the end of the first quarter of this year the fleet numbered just four B747-400Fs.

Like Lufthansa, the Franco-Dutch carrier also improved its load factor in October, which rose to 62 per cent, up from against 61.7 per cent last year.

Finnair managed to buck the trend of slowing growth in October as it achieved 16.1 per cent year-on-year growth to 96.9 million revenue tonne kilometres. This compares favourably to its year-to-date growth rate of 8.5 per cent.

The increase comes as the airline raised capacity by 18.1 per cent as it has added newer aircraft with greater capacity.

"The strongest growth markets year on year were again Japan, Germany, Sweden, Hong Kong and the main Chinese destinations," the airline was cited as saying.

"Finnair's total cargo capacity also included three weekly freighter flights between Helsinki and Brussels, operated by DHL as well as cargo space rented on Japan Airlines' daily flights between Tokyo and Helsinki."