New IATA Director General and CEO-designate Alexandre de Juniac
Photo by: IATA
Global air freight volumes (measured in freight ton kilometres or FTKs) fell by 5.6% in February, in comparison to February 2015, the International Air Transport Association (Iata) reported on Wednesday. However, this figure is misleading because strikes in US harbours in February last year caused a temporary jump in air freight and because the Lunar New Year – a very important holiday in East Asia, during which many factories are closed – happened in February this year, causing air cargo volumes to fall temporarily. For example, China’s exports fell, in terms of value, by 25% in February.
If the air cargo volumes for both January and February this year are compared to the same two months in 2014 (not 2015), the result is an increase of 6.3%. This is equivalent to an annualised growth trend of 3.1%.
“The air freight business remains a difficult one,” affirmed Iata director-general and CEO Tony Tyler. “February’s performance continues a weak trend. And there are few factors on the horizon that would see this change substantially. In the absence of an imminent resurgence of demand, the importance of improving the value proposition with modernised processes – the e-freight vision – remains a top priority.”
Africa accounted for 1.5% of global air cargo in February and suffered a drop of 1.7% in volumes in comparison to February last year. Iata sees this largely as a result of the economic woes afflicting the region’s two biggest economies, Nigeria and South Africa. Africa is the smallest of Iata’s regions in terms of air freight. The largest is the Asia-Pacific, with a share of 38.9%, which saw a month-on-month fall in volumes of 12.4% due to the combination of the US port strike last year and this year’s Lunar New Year.
Europe accounts for 22.3% of global air cargo volumes and experienced a month-on-month drop of 2.4%. The respective figures for North America were 20.5% and a fall of 4%. However, Latin America (2.8% of global air freight) saw a month-on-month rise of 2.7%, underpinned by North/South American routes, and the Middle East (14% of world air cargo) had an increase of 3.7%.
Meanwhile, on Tuesday, Iata also announced that its board of governors had unanimously agreed to recommend Air France-KLM Chairman and CEO Alexandre de Juniac as the association’s new director-general and CEO. This decision will be confirmed by the Iata annual general meeting (to be held from June 1 to 3 in Dublin, Ireland), after which Tyler will step down and retire.