A tough year for Europe’s cargo carriers

What do we know about December and about full year 2014?

December results from many of the world’s big carriers and airports are still not in, but we know that, worldwide, the year through November was good, with traffic up just a little under 5%. Anecdotal evidence suggests that December may not have been as strong (on a year-over-year basis) as September, October, and November, but that most carriers and airports continued to see reasonable gains.

But reports from Europe’s big three carriers show that they missed the boat. Or the plane.

As shown in the accompanying chart, all three reported declines for both December and the full year. We will post our usual monthly summary of the monthly results once the rest of the world’s big cargo players have reported, but it is clear — at least for Lufthansa, Air France-KLM, and IAG — that European carriers are losing market share to their competitors.