International air cargo traffic continued to recover last month with cargo demand increasing28.1% but a volcano-related drop is expected for April, the International Air Transport Association
(IATA) announced today.The March cargo traffic increase is a further improvement from the 26.5% growth in February.These are strong gains, but the data is being compared to March 2009, which was the low point forinternational air travel during the recession, IATA said in a statement.
“March results show that the pace of the upturn is strong. But the trauma of the recession isnot over. The industry has lost two years of growth, and passenger and freight markets are still 1%below early 2008 highs. Nonetheless, the pace of improvement, based on an improving global economicsituation, is much faster than anybody would have expected even six months ago,” said GiovanniBisignani, IATA’s Director General and CEO.
The 28.1% improvement in demand outpaced the 5.3% capacity expansion in March driving freightload factors to 57.1% which is the highest since November 2002 when international freight loadfactors stood at 58.8%.
Global air freight is now within 1% point of recovering to its previous high point of early2008. During the second half of 2008, international air freight volumes shrank by over one quarter.The upturn in the business inventory cycle has almost eliminated that decline, although the upturnfor international air freight has taken twice as long as the collapse.
In regional terms, airlines in all regions apart from Europe are benefiting from the strongupturn in air freight volumes, similar to the February results. Despite the sluggish US economy,North American airlines have seen an international freight rebound (+32.2%). Carriers in AsiaPacific experienced an even higher traffic growth of 34.1% with very strong import and exportvolumes. Asia-Pacific growth was further surpassed by Middle East (+35.5%). Latin American carriersrecorded the strongest growth at 47.9%. But European carriers showed the weakest improvement infreight demand at 11.7%, largely due to the slow economic recovery in the region.
The strong traffic recovery is expected to show a dip in April as a result of the eruption of anIcelandic volcano in April that saw the shutdown of large portions of European airspace over asix-day period, IATA added.
“European carriers were already showing the weakest recovery from the financial crisis throughMarch. The volcanic ash crisis hit the weakest part of the industry the hardest. The majority ofthe US$1.7 billion in lost revenues was by Europe’s carriers. Passenger confidence is not affectedand we expect a quick rebound. The combined impact of lost business and added costs will certainlyhit the bottom line,” Bisignani concluded.
