Global Air Cargo – Have we reached bottom?
IATA has released their air cargo volumes for the month of February and it is no surprise that numbers are significantly lower than February numbers for 2008.
February international freight volumes were 22.1% below 2008 levels. This is the third consecutive month at more than 20% below previous year levels (-23.2 in January and -22.6% in December).
The only bright spot (if you can call it that) is that the drastic decline in volumes as compared to 2008 appear to be leveling out. The last three months of international cargo volumes have been in the -23% to -22% range indicating that we may have reached a bottom. Having said that, 3 months might not be sufficient enough of a time frame to formulate a trend.
Freight traffic, which began its decline in June 2008 before passenger markets were hit, has now had three consecutive months in the -22% to -23% range. We may have found a bottom to the freight decline, but the magnitude of the drop means that it will take time to recover,” said Giovanni Bisignani, IATA’s Director General and CEO.
Asian carriers continue to see the sharpest declines.
Asian carriers – the largest players in cargo – saw demand fall by 24.7% as the region’s high-value export-dependant industries were hard hit by falling consumer demand in the major markets of Europe, the US and Japan. Japanese exports have almost halved from February 2008 levels.
Click here for the complete report from IATA.
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PapaG on Wed, 1st Apr 2009 9:46 pm
Much like the wishful utterances on CNBC and the postings on numerous partisan blogs, IATA is looking for ANYTHING which can even remotely be spun as non-negative. Given the depths our markets are probing today, I can’t say that I blame them.
Based in ATL, we’ve not yet seen anything which inspires optimism as cargo volumes are simply pathetic. While the US media laments the state of GM & Chrysler, our 3pl customers servicing the SE automakers MB, BMW, & Hyundai are doodling as recent cutbacks have their facilities running as lean as possible. Locally based suppliers for them all have gone to 4 day work weeks and bare bones staffing and most will perform maintenance over the Spring Break Week.
Export volumes continue to be pathetic and comprised primarily of industrial retail sales. Nothing substantive in the way of production or manufacturing materials are moving in either direction and that is what I’ve used as a measuring stick for 25 years.
What domestic air freight we’re seeing is all consumption related. Again, we are not seeing any of the tell tale shipments reflecting industrial production and what supplies are moving are nothing more than maintenance related.
I am not looking forward to finishing my Q1 accounting and just off the top of my head can state that we are probably down 70+% from Q1 2008 based on what I completed today. When business is at normal levels, I would not be able to produce a complete accounting until the end of April.