#Europe still trailing #global #aircargogrowth The gap between the sluggish European air cargo sector and the resurgent global market looks set to widen with two of the region’s leading carriers posting declines in freight traffic in August. Air France-KLM, Europe’s largest cargo airline by revenue, saw traffic shrink by 1.7 percent from August 2013, outweighing a 0.6 percent reduction in capacity which reduced the load factor by 0.6 percentage points also to 58.7 percent. The latest negative traffic figures were released after the Franco-Dutch airline announced it is cutting its freighter fleet to three 747-ERFs and two 777Fs in 2016 from a total of 14 aircraft, including five MD-11Fs, in 2013. air cargo chartFull-size chart IAG, the merged British Airways-Iberia carrier, reported volume was down 4.6 percent in August, with the traditionally stronger U.K. airline suffering a steeper decline than its perennially weaker Spanish partner. British Airways’ freight traffic contracted by 6.2 percent from August 2013 and was 2.5 percent lower in the first seven months of the year. Iberia posted a 4.1 percent decline in August for a seven-month decrease of 3.4 percent from the same period in 2013. The picture will become clearer tomorrow when Lufthansa Cargo, Europe’s biggest scheduled freighter operator, publishes its August figures. The carrier reported a 2.3 percent decline in tonnage to 141,000 metric tons in July, while Europe as a whole grew traffic by 1.8 percent, according to the International Air Transport Association. Europe’s slow growth, because of to the Ukraine crisis and spluttering economic growth in the eurozone, contrasted with a 5.8 percent overall market growth, driven by a 7.1 percent surge in the Asia-Pacific region, the world’s largest cargo market, and a 5.2 percent increase in North America.
Posted on: Tue, 09 Sep 2014 09:01:32 +0000
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