The surge in online shopping, especially in the US, helped power an upturn in worldwide aircargo volumes in November, with the strongest growth for airlines in Asia, Middle East and Latin
America and slow growth for US and European carriers, IATA said today.Air freight markets rebounded strongly in November, expanding by 1.6% year-on-year after a 2.6%year-on-year decline in October, although some of this increase reflects the impact of the Thaifloods in the year-ago period, the international airline association said.
More notably, November air freight volumes increased 2.4% on October. This reflects a shift inseasonal shopping to online retailers, which depend heavily on air cargo, and also shows improvedconsumer confidence in the US, IATA pointed out.
Tony Tyler, IATA’s Director General and CEO, commented: “November brought some positive signsfor air transport demand, particularly for air cargo. It is premature to consider this a turningpoint for air cargo markets in terms of bouncing back and regaining lost ground. But, when coupledwith positive economic developments in the US and an improvement in business confidence in recentmonths, the conditions are aligning to see a return to growth in 2013. In 2013 we expect that cargovolumes will grow 1.4%, and passenger traffic will increase by 4.5% worldwide.”
In its analysis of the figures, IATA noted that seasonally-adjusted air freight volumes have nowrisen back to the levels of mid-2012, after declines in the third quarter. Stronger Asian exportsto the US were a key factor in November along with greater volumes of high-value, low-weightconsumer goods bought online from large international e-retailers.
In regional terms, the November growth was driven by airlines based in Asia Pacific, the MiddleEast, Latin America and Africa, IATA figures showed.
Asia-Pacific airlines were responsible for almost half the rise in total volumes compared toOctober. The 2.4% rise in month-on-month volumes for the region was in contrast to a 1.5% declinecompared to November 2011. Freight capacity fell 2.8% over the period.
However, the Association of Asia Pacific Airlines (AAPA), which reported a 0.9% year-on-yearrise in air freight traffic for airlines in the region in November, was cautious about regionaltrends. “The air cargo market has had another disappointing year with international freight trafficdown a cumulative 3.6% on last year’s levels, reflecting weak demand for Asian exports to the majordeveloped markets, especially Europe,” commented AAPA director general Andrew Herdmann.
Elsewhere, IATA said that North American carriers increased freight traffic by 1.7%, and cutcapacity by 0.6%, compared to November 2011. European airlines’ year-on-year freight traffic wasflat, and capacity grew just 0.3%. This was similar to figures from the European airportsassociation ACI Europe which said that freight traffic among European airports dropped by 0.5% inNovember.
Middle East carriers’ freight showed the strongest year-on-year growth of any region, up 16% onjust a 6.1% rise in capacity, IATA said. Load factor surged to 46.7%, up 4 percentage points. LatinAmerican airlines’ freight grew 4.2% year-on-year, but capacity grew at more than twice the rate,up 8.5%. African carriers grew freight volumes by 4.4% compared to November 2011. Although theykept the capacity increase to 3.6%, the load factor of 26.2% was still the weakest of all regionsby a wide margin.
