Leading airports and airlines in Europe and Asia saw a further drop in cargo traffic last monthas falling demand continued to hit business.
Lower cargo volumes in Asia were again the key factor, according to traffic figures announced byseveral leading operators. IATA is due to release traffic results for December and 2011 later thismonth.
In Europe, Frankfurt Airport, the continent’s top cargo airport, saw air freight volumes declineby 6.5% to 168,000 tonnes, although air mail enjoyed a seasonal Christmas peak, rising 18.5% tomore than 9,000 tonnes. Over the full year, freight tonnage declined 2.8% to 2.17 million tonnesbut air mail was up 7.7% to more than 82,000 tonnes.
“After the extraordinary gains of 2010, the airfreight sector has increasingly felt the impactof the slowdown in the global economy during the course of last year. Airfreight throughput in 2011slipped by 2.8% to 2.17 million tonnes. Nevertheless, this clearly exceeded the pre-crisis level of2007,” airport operator Fraport stated.
In Britain, Heathrow Airport saw cargo volumes rise 14.2% to over 124,000 tonnes last month,which was the first growth figure since February 2011. This surprisingly strong increase left theoverall figure for 2011 fractionally higher by 0.8% at 1.5 million tonnes.
Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport reported a 0.3% drop in December volumes to 125,000 tonnes, withlower Asia traffic, while its full-year cargo volumes were unchanged at 1.5 million tonnes. But thegroup’s CEO, Jos Nijhuis warned: “This year will be a challenging year, in which we are expectingto see passenger volumes stabilise and cargo volumes shrink.”
In Asia, Hong Kong-based Cathay Pacific experienced a significant year-on-year decline in cargodemand, continuing the downward Asian trend from November. Combined cargo and mail figures forCathay Pacific and subsidiary Dragonair were down 11.9% in December 2011. The cargo and mail loadfactor dropped 9.6 percentage points to 67.8% due to a capacity increase of 3.9%. For the year aswhole, the airlines’ tonnage dropped by 8.6% compared to a capacity increase of 6.9%, while cargoand mail tonne kilometres flown fell by 5.2%.
James Woodrow, Cathay Pacific General Manager, Cargo Sales & Marketing said: “Thetraditional year-end peak for our cargo business simply didn’t happen and our December figures werea disappointing end to what was a challenging year overall. Demand out of our key markets in HongKong and Mainland China remain soft and there is no sign of any upturn in prospect as we move into2012. On the positive side, we have been seeing good contributions from recently added destinationssuch as Chongqing, Chengdu and Zaragoza and we will continue to seek out new businessopportunities.”
This decline follows a 6.6% traffic drop at Hong Kong Airport, the world’s busiest internationalcargo airport, for November 2011, mainly as the result of a 10% year-on-year drop in exports.
