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| Friday, 17 September 2004 |
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Air Cargo volumes up 14.1% in first seven months of 2004 The air cargo industry continues to enjoy an upturn in volumes as the global economy undergoes what seems to be a sustained recovery. The latest indicators from a range of airlines and other industry bodies show that there are across the board improvements compared with 2003. In August Lufthansa, one of the world's largest air cargo carriers, reported double-digit growth rates. The airline moved 15% more freight and mail and overall sales increased by 14.1%. Load factors also improved significantly to 66.3 per cent (+ 5.2 pp) due to an increase in available capacity of only 5%. In Europe Lufthansa reported growth of 25% helped by its capacity allocation agreement with DHL. BA which had suffered a difficult month due to a large number of flight cancellations, still managed to post a strong performance. Cargo volumes rose by 19.3% and its overall load factor rose by 1.9 points to 71.5%. BAA, the world's largest airports authority, reported a rise of cargo throughput at its airports of about 10%. French/Dutch alliance Air France-KLM saw cargo traffic grow year on year in August by 6.8% although overall capacity increased by 8.2%. Consequently, its load factor decreased slightly to 64.3% (down 0.8 points). For Air France alone, cargo traffic increased by 10.0% in line with capacity and KLM cargo traffic moved up by 3.3%. Figures published by IATA, the industry body representing the majority of the world's airlines, suggest that cargo volumes have risen 14.1% in the first seven months of 2004 compared with 2003 and 15.3% when compared to 2000. Although Asia Pacific continues to be the fastest growing of the major regions, Middle East and Africa have seen growth of between 20-30%. However, the increase in volumes does not necessarily represent a direct improvement in the air carriers' fortunes with rising fuel prices impacting on their profitability. IATA estimates that for every $1 increase in the price of a barrel of crude oil an extra $1billion is added to the industry's (both passenger and cargo) costs although to some extent this will be mitigated by fuel surcharges which are being imposed. |
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