The ideas of March
Most operators want to forget March – a month that will remain long in our memories. Volumes collapsed – albeit more ‘mildly’ than in the passenger disaster zone – but more freighters – ‘true’ and ‘false’ ones – than ever before kept the air supply chain breathing.
The Chinese civil aviation authority released some good news on 15 April, stating that “in comparison with the same period last year, airfreight volumes grew by 28.4% to 253,000 t.” The period under review? March 2020! This contrasts with the perception prevailing in the rest of the world; namely that global air cargo volumes – as Clive Data Services has reported – collapsed by 23% year-over-year in the four weeks of March, to stand at half the preceding figure.
The “most dynamic load factor” the analyst found simultaneously stood at 68%, a mere 1.5 percentage points lower than in March 2019, and 3 points more than the figure recorded for February this year. Some data is even better. A steady upswing has been observed at Hong Kong airport since week six, when volumes loaded for transport to Europe had shrunk to one quarter of that flown at the beginning of the year. At the end of March, finally, the exceed the figure for the beginning of the month by a quarter.
‘Oh my LCC’
Icao, Iata and Tiaca are continuing to do their best to ensure that freight can fly unhampered. Airlines that usually offer passenger services exclusively are also discovering the air cargo sector these days.
