The global representative body for the airline industry, the International Air Transport Association (Iata), has reported that air cargo markets worldwide continued to register strong growth during July. (Because of the extreme market-distorting effects of the Covid-19 pandemic last year, Iata used July 2019 as the basis for comparison.)

Global air cargo demand rose 8.6%. This was significantly higher than the long-term growth trend of 4.7%. However, July’s growth rate was slightly less than that of June, which had recorded demand growth of 9.2% (compared with June 2019). Air cargo capacity was improving, but was still 10.3% below that available in July 2019 (due to a continued lack of airliner belly-hold capacity).

Global economic conditions continued to underpin growth in air cargo demand. In July, the export orders element of Purchasing Managers Indices (in manufacturing industries) was 52.7%, which indicated a short-term impetus to air cargo demand, provided those orders were transported by air. And in many retail enterprises, the ratio of inventory-to-sales was still low, with the year-end peak retail season not far away.

“July was another solid month for global air cargo demand,” stated Iata director-general Willie Walsh. “Economic conditions indicate that the strong demand growth trend will continue into the peak year-end demand period. The Delta variant of Covid-19 could bring some risks. If supply chains and production lines are disrupted, there is potential for a knock-on effect for air cargo shipments.”

The region which saw the strongest increase in international air cargo demand in July was North America, which experienced a jump of 20.5%. In very sharp contrast, the region which recorded the worst performance was the one right next door – Latin America. This region suffered a decline of 10.2% in international air cargo traffic. However, this represented a major improvement over the decline of 21.5% recorded in June (compared with June 2019), and certain air trade routes to and from Latin America did perform well in July, signalling that a recovery was underway there.

The second best performing region was the Middle East, which enjoyed an 11.3% increase in international air cargo demand. Next came Europe, with a rise of 6% (although this was a slight reduction in comparison to the June 2021/June 2019 increase of 6.8%). The Asia Pacific region recorded an increase in international air cargo of 4.4% in July. Cargo demand figures for Africa were not available in time to be included in the Iata report for July.