Worldwide air cargo weight decreased by 5.8% in January 2020 year-over-year as the Chinese New Year fell at the end of January compared to coming in around February of last year, said WorldACD.
General cargo contracted 9% year-on-year, while special cargo grew a mere 0.5%. High-tech & other vulnerable goods increased by 4.6% year-over-year, while pharma & temperature-controlled goods rose by 6.5%. In perishables, meat did best (+6.7%), followed by flowers (+2.2%), but all other categories declined (-2.7%).
Yield measured in US dollars declined 5.6% year-on-year, standing at US$1.74. The cargo load factor dropped by 1.9 percentage-points year-on-year.
In terms of region, traffic to Asia-Pacific fell by 13.6% year-on-year in January, while exports dropped by 8.0%. Latin America was the only region showing growth in air cargo exports (+2.7%), while the destinations Africa and Middle East & South Asia (MESA) were the only regions that saw imports by air increase year-over-year (3.1% and 0.6%, respectively).
But in spite of the poor cargo results for the airline sector as a whole, two of the larger and three of the smaller airlines in WorldACD’s database chalked up double-digit growth.
Not unexpectedly, WorldACD forecasts air cargo figures for February to be “shocking,” and anticipates that the first quarter of the year “will turn out to be an extraordinary period for the world and for world trade, and thus for air cargo.”
It continued: “The corona-virus leaves traces in almost all aspects of life, not just in China but increasingly elsewhere as well. Supply chains have been disrupted around the world, to varying degrees, marking how much we have come to rely on Chinese production.”
It noted that the first reliable figures on how individual markets around the world will be affected by the outbreak should be out by mid-March when detailed February data on air cargo volumes and yields will have been reported.
In the meantime, its data on long-term trends in markets worldwide shows that since 2010, the worldwide index (with base year 2010 = 100) crept up to 129 in 2018, before falling back to 123 in 2019, indicating a growth of 23% since 2010.
On a country basis, air cargo exports have more than doubled for several countries, including Vietnam and key regions in China as well as Cambodia and Myanmar. In Africa, such growth was manifested in Morocco, Tunisia, Uganda and Nigeria. Elsewhere, cargo exports also more than doubled for Maldives, Norway, Poland, Turkey, Jordan, Luxembourg and Honduras.
