Air cargo demand continues to improve with records breached in November by the Hong Kong aviation industry, helped in part by the congestion at the U.S. seaports.
The Hong Kong International Airport (HKIA) set a new monthly record last month as cargo volume rose by 5.5% year-on-year to reach 421,000 tonnes. Continued growth was also seen in other traffic categories during the month, in which HKIA handled 5.1 million passengers and 32,920 flight movements, registering growth of 5.4% and 4%, respectively, over the same period last year.
The growth in cargo throughput was driven by transshipments and exports, which were up 11% and 5%, respectively, from a year ago. Cargo throughput to and from North America and Southeast Asia increased most significantly compared to other key regions.
Passenger traffic in November was mainly driven by a 12% year-on-year growth in transfer and transit traffic. Passenger traffic to and from North Asia and China recorded the most significant increases.
“This is the first time HKIA has handled over 400,000 tonnes of cargo in a single month,” said Julia Yan, general manager of strategic planning and development for airport operator and developer Airport Authority Hong Kong.
She added that with the seasonal surge in both cargo shipments and passenger traffic demand, the authority expects across-the-board growth in traffic volume to continue as the year draws to a close, “setting new annual records for all three traffic categories.”
Over the first 11 months of 2014, HKIA handled 57.7 million passenger trips, 4 million tonnes of cargo, and 356,700 flight movements, representing growth of 5.6%, 6.3%, and 5.1%, respectively, over the same period last year.
On a rolling 12-month basis, passenger volume grew by 5.7% to 63 million, while cargo throughput climbed by 5.8% to 4.4 million tonnes. Flight movements rose by 5.3% from the previous year to 389,545.
Cathay Pacific’s double-digit volume spurt
Meanwhile, Cathay Pacific Airways said the cargo and mail tonnage uplift continued to show strong year-on-year growth in November. Its sister airlines Cathay Pacific and Dragonair carried combined volumes of 165,102 tonnes of cargo and mail last month, an increase of 12% compared to November last year.
Cargo and mail load factor rose by 4.7 percentage points to 68.4%. Capacity, measured in available cargo/mail tonne kilometers, rose by 5.3% while cargo and mail revenue tonne kilometers (RTKs) flown were up by 13.1%.
For the year to the end of November, tonnage rose by 11.9%, while capacity was up 10.7% and RTKs increased by 14.8%.
Passenger volumes for the two airlines, on the other hand, totaled 2,569,508 passengers in November, an increase of 3.7% compared to the same month in 2013. The passenger load factor fell by 0.9 percentage points to 80.4%, while capacity, measured in available seat kilometers, increased by 5%.
For the year to the end of November, passenger volumes were up by 5.4% compared to a 5.9% increase in capacity.
“The demand for air cargo shipments remained very robust throughout November, again driven primarily by strong traffic on the transpacific lanes,” said Mark Sutch, Cathay Pacific general manager of cargo sales and marketing. “Our business was helped by the bottlenecks in seaports on the West Coast of the USA, leading to more shipments being moved by air.”
Intra-Asian traffic remained robust in November, and cargo business in Europe improved, helped by big shipments of the newly released Beaujolais burgundy wine out of France.
“The growth in passenger traffic was again below expectations in November. Unlike in the previous month, we believe some of the shortfall was attributable to the protests taking place in Hong Kong,” Cathay Pacific general manager of revenue management Patricia Hwang said.
Hactl scales new heights
For Hong Kong Air Cargo Terminals Limited (Hactl), the state’s largest cargo handler, November 2014 was a month of new records.
During the period, it handled a record 5,238 tonnes of export cargo on November 9, only to break this again on November 23 with a new record of 5,456 tonnes. A new weekly record of 29,031 tonnes of exports was set in the week of November 10 to November 16.
Total tonnage handled in a single day reached a record of 6,979 tonnes on November 9, and this was broken again on November 23 with a new figure of 7,292 tonnes. A new weekly record total of 41,107 tonnes was also set in the week ending November 30. Overall tonnage in the month also broke the previous record of 164,743 tonnes set in November 2013, with a new figure of 176,103 tonnes.
Contributing to the latest Hactl records were the U.S. west coast port congestion, traditional traffic peaks related to Thanksgiving and Christmas, and the launch of new mobile products.
Said group chief executive Mark Whitehead: “2014 has proven a strong year for Hactl, exceeding our expectations.”
Records also set earlier in 2014 are daily imports (2,081 tonnes on April 25), weekly imports (12,515 tonnes in the week of June 23-June 29) and monthly imports (52,693 tonnes in March).
Photo courtesy of Hactl
