Impact of pandemic on already struggling airports
Significantly later than in 2019 and 2018, Airports Council International (ACI) published last year's traffic figures of its 1979 member airports in 176 countries only last week, including a comparison of Q1 figures of 2019 and 2020.
As for cargo, against a global economic backdrop that remained quite challenging, volumes experienced a decline of -3.9% at the world’s top 20 airports as they handled a combined 48 million t of cargo. Hong Kong remains the largest hub, handling 4.8 million t of cargo in 2019, but it experienced a decline in volume of -6.1%. Memphis was in second place and Shanghai Pudong came in third.
All three experienced considerable declines in the first quarter of 2020 while Louisville and Incheon recorded growth in cargo during the first stages of the Covid-19 outbreak. (ah)