Air freight traffic growth slows further

The International Air Transport Association (IATA) released its air freight market analysis for July 2015, showing an overall 0.6% year-over-year decrease in worldwide freight traffic (in tonne-kilometers flown), “in line with weaker global economic growth.” On a regional basis, results varied from a 5.1% y-o-y decline in traffic reported by Latin American carriers, to a 10.8% gain for carriers based in the Middle East. The overall 0.6% drop was driven by a 0.7% decrease in international traffic in July, while domestic traffic for the month was up 0.2%. For the first seven months of 2015, IATA said worldwide air freight traffic grew 2.9%, led by 3.2% growth in international traffic, while domestic traffic was up just 0.8%.

After a strong start to the year, recently traffic has been falling month-to-month, resulting in a July FTK total down 2% from the level at the end of 2014. Despite the market weakness, IATA says: “At the moment we are sticking with our view that economic growth and trade will improve in the second half of the year, providing some support to air cargo volumes. However, given recent declines in air freight, there would need to be a significant pick-up in H2 for prior growth expectations to be met.” In contrast to the weak growth in air freight, IATA found “robust passenger demand,” with revenue-passenger-kilometer totals up 8.2% year-over-year in July and up 6.5% year-to-date.