World’s Top 50 Cargo Airlines
Last month Air Cargo World released their annual rankings for the world’s top 50 cargo airports, this month they feature the world’s top 50 cargo airlines for 2007.
No big surprise to see that Fedex retained it’s spot on top of the rankings with a modest growth of 3.8 percent. Actually there was no change to the top four from 2006 to 2007 with UPS, Korean Air, and Lufthansa rounding out positions two through four. It will be interesting to see how much ground UPS makes on rival Fedex in 2008 with the additional freight from their partnership with DHL.
FedEx and UPS retained their vaulted positions despite punishing high fuel costs, a faltering economy and a noticeable decline in domestic air cargo. Significant quarterly losses in early 2008 showed how even the integrated express carriers continue to get pounded financially. FedEx lost $241 million in the three months ending May 31 compared with a profit of $610 million for the same quarter in 2007, while UPS saw its net profit fall 21 percent in its second quarter.
The largest mover in the top 10 was Cathay Pacific with a 19% jump over the prior year moving up from the 7th spot in 2006 to the 6th spot in 2007. The carrier with the largest percentage of growth was Shanghai Airlines with a 60.8% growth in business, no doubt helped by the increase in China trade.
Biggest loser? Number 42 on the list, South African Airways with a -23.8% drop.
Rankings for the top 50 are based on based on freight traffic measured in freight tonne kilometers flown. Be sure to check out the report from Air Cargo World for complete information regarding the top 50.
3plwire on Mon, 15th Sep 2008 5:46 pm
SwizStick here. It’s been at least 2 years since I’ve dealt with South African Airways, but I used to use them quite a bit. I’m not involved in the day-to-day ops of Air Cargo any more and certainly don’t have detailed knowledge of what’s going on with South African Airways, but based on my experience their service was average at best. And it always seemed a struggle to find out the actual status of my shipment. Often it seemed the status as reported by their system was either incorrect, not updated, or simply missing. I remember our ops team having to call South Africa directly to get correct status on our shipments.
I have no idea whether service issues and/or lower demand for their cargo services contributed to their restructuring and dropping 747 aircraft from their fleet, but it wouldn’t surprise me.