The world air cargo sector appears to have dusted off the Icelandic volcanic ash in May withimpressive growth rates, according to early figures from leading cargo airports.
In April, when much of Europe’s airspace was closed for several days due to the Icelandicvolcanic ash cloud over the continent, this year’s ongoing recovery in worldwide air freightvolumes slowed to a 20.7% increase, the airport association ACI said. This was the lowest growthrate so far in 2010, following a 25.6% increase in March, a 22.5% rise in February and 25% growthin January. IATA reported lower growth of 25.2% in international air cargo traffic in April due tothe impact of the European airport closures.
But May is already looking as though it has put this slight growth dip behind it, although thestatistics may include a slight backlog effect from the previous month.
In Europe, Frankfurt Airport achieved a new record last month with tonnage surging by 39.7% to204,332 tonnes, and making May 2010 the busiest airfreight month in Frankfurt Airport’s history.Volumes are now up by 32.7% for the year to date.
Fraport AG CEO Stefan Schulte said: “The high growth rates in airfreight tonnage resultespecially from Asia’s dynamic economic activity and from airfreight’s special forte of makingavailable at short notice the capacities required by industry and trade.”
In Asia, Hong Kong Air Cargo Terminals Limited (Hactl), which handles most of the air cargo atHong Kong international airport, registered a 44.6% rise to 257,315 tonnes in May 2010. It alsoachieved another record with its highest-ever daily tonnage on May 13, with a total of 10,184tonnes. Cumulative tonnage for the first five months of the year was 1,142,875 tonnes, up 40.1%year-on-year.
The boom in exports from Asia, especially China, continued last month with a 56.7% rise inexport volumes, leaving the five-month figure up 48.2%. Import volume for May increased 31.2%, withvolumes for the first five months showing year-on-year growth of 37.4%.
