Air Freight experiences year-on-year increase in demand

IATA has recently published data relating to global air freight performance from November 2013. Results were promising, with the sector as a whole seeing a 6.1% year-on-year increase in FTK (freight tonne kilometres), an improvement on October’s 4.4% increase.

Most regions experienced growth: European airlines reported an 8% increase in demand, North American carriers saw demand grow 2.5% and Asia-Pacific carriers registered a 4.9% growth. By far the strongest performance was the Middle East, whose carriers reported a strong year-on-year growth of 16.5%. Latin America and Africa, which, combined, constitute less than 5% of global freight traffic, both saw slight contraction in demand for November: Latin America reported a small year-on-year decline of 0.1% and Africa registered a fall of 1.2%.

The average load factor also increased, climbing 0.7 percentage points from last November to 49.2%.

IATA’s Director General and CEO Tony Tyler commented: “The November results are encouraging - particularly for carriers in the Asia-Pacific region. This good news is largely being driven by improving economic prospects in China along with an overall boost on Asian trade routes. The uptick is a welcome development in a weak performing market. Overall volumes, when adjusted for seasonality, are still below the peaks reached in 2010 and 2011.”