Friday 12 July 2013

European Air Cargo manages a 1% rise in May, in a sluggish month for the industry

IATA have recently released figures reporting on the global air cargo market growth for May: broadly speaking, the market has continued to flatline, following the trend of the last 18 months. Global freight tonne kilometres increased slightly by 0.8% year-on-year, and while capacity increased by 2.1%, load factors fell to 44.9%, the lowest level since post-crisis recovery.

The sluggishness in the market has been attributed to a variety of factors including the decelerated growth in developing economies such as China China and the global decline of business confidence. Tony Tyler, Director General and CEO of IATA, said, “It is getting harder to find optimistic signs for air cargo growth. The Middle East remains a bright spot, and the rate of decline in the Eurozone is easing. But this is offset by the weakening of expansion in Asia-Pacific. It is now clear that the positive global upswing in air cargo at the end of 2012 was an illusion. Air cargo, along with many parts of the world economy, appears to be in suspended animation at the moment”. 

The Middle East region saw the most growth, with a year-on-year increase of 9.7%, Europe was second in line with the much lower figures of 1% growth, followed by Africa at just 0.2%. All other regions, comprising Latin America, North America and Asia Pacific, registered slight declines. 

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