Asia-Pacific’s airports posted a slight increase in total air freight traffic for the whole of 2015, and continued the trend of weak growth going into January, according to Airports Council International (ACI).
ACI in its latest report said cargo volume in the region saw a marginal increase of 0.7% in December 2015, which is in line with weak freight growth over the course of the year of 1.5% on an annualized basis. International air freight growth was especially weak during the 12 months, amounting to only 1%.
In January 2016, the region posted overall growth of 3.3% year-on-year. Much of this was accounted for by domestic air freight, which increased 7.9%. The region’s international air freight volume growth registered at 1.5%.
China, accounting for almost a third of air freight traffic in the region, grew by a modest 3.3% in total traffic, broken down into 3.3% in domestic and 3.4% growth in international freight.
Japan grew by a marginal 0.9%, where a 5.2% decline in domestic freight was counterbalanced with 3.4% growth international freight.
Hong Kong remained flat at 0.1%, while India posted robust 6.4% in total freight, where both domestic and international traffic went up by 7.4% and 5.8% respectively.
South Korea reported marginal growth of 0.4% in total freight, where the 0.9% growth in international freight was suppressed by a 3.7% decline in domestic freight traffic.
Taiwan went into negative territory with a 3.2% decline in international and total freight.
Meanwhile, total world air freight traffic rose 1.5% in January as it continued to maintain momentum in an environment marked by continued uncertainty in the global economy and weakened commodity prices, said ACI.
Of this, international freight inched up just 0.9% year-on-year, while domestic air cargo went up 2.7%.
Aside from the Asia-Pacific, gainers for the month was led by the Middle East with an improvement in total air freight volume of 7.4% year-on-year, followed by Africa with 3.7%, then Europe with 3.5%.
On the other hand, freight traffic dropped by 2.8% and 4.7% in North America and Latin America-Caribbean regions, respectively.
Photo: Craig
