The slow economy was reflected in air cargo volumes as a third of the world’s top 30 busiest cargo airports experienced declines last year.
Airfreight traffic inched up only slightly by 0.7 percent in 2013, as volumes have remained at “essentially the same levels over the last three years,” said Airports Council International (ACI), citing traffic results in 2013 based on reports from over 1,105 airports worldwide.
“The global economy remains in a vulnerable state moving forward into 2014,” said ACI. “As many advanced economies continued to experience varying degrees of recovery, with the ongoing risks in the euro area and fiscal imbalances in the United States, emerging markets also felt the burden of the slowdown.”
Most regions remained relatively weak in year-over-year cargo growth rates except for the Middle East, which posted a 5.1 percent increase in tonnage.
The world’s largest air cargo hub continues to be Hong Kong, growing 2.3 percent year-over-year, followed by Memphis with a 3 percent expansion, then by Shanghai, which saw a decline of 3 percent.
Rounding off the list of the world’s top 20 busiest cargo airports last year are Inchon, Dubai, Anchorage, Louisville, Frankfurt, Paris, Tokyo, Miami, Singapore, Beijing, Los Angeles, Taipei, Amsterdam, London, Guangzhou, New York, and Bangkok.
In other news, Europe’s Lufthansa Cargo reported an increase in capacity sales to nearly 72 percent for the first quarter of 2014, its exceptional performance attributed to a “disciplined capacity management.”
The company said it kept its capacity flexible and demand-driven. In the first three months of 2014, it increased its capacity by only 1.6 percent and was able to achieve a sell-out in the period. With 399,000 tonnes of transported freight and mail, its tonnage remained on par with the previous year’s figure.
“There are noticeable, albeit still mild, signs of a market recovery,” said the cargo airline’s CEO Karl Ulrich Garnadt. “For this reason Lufthansa Cargo has only gradually increased its capacities for the time being. But I trust that we will be able to strengthen our market position with new Boeing 777 freighters and an attractive, global network in the course of the year.”
Photo: Benson Kua
