The 2016 Freight 50: A few caveats…

The Freight 50 listing for 2016 is the most comprehensive snapshot of the air cargo carrier business in existence, but it is still just an “estimate,” for several reasons. Chiefly, there is not a single database that is 100 percent accurate on a global scale, so we have to rely on multiple sources (IATA, USDOT, self-reporting carriers) that don’t always tally their traffic the same way.

Also, not all of these carriers bother to report annual cargo figures – airlines such as ASL Group, HNA Group’s Yangtze River Express, MNG Airlines, myCargo Airlines, SF Express, and West Atlantic, to name a few. In the case of one carrier – DHL Express – it is almost impossible to provide a definitive estimate of the amount of cargo the German integrator carried in 2015, since DHL either owns or is a joint-venture partner with several airlines, some of which don’t report their annual traffic to IATA.

DHL also moves a significant percentage of its shipments using purchased or leased space on non-affiliated carriers worldwide. For the Freight 50, we have included freight carried by DHL Air, DHL International, ABX Air, AeroLogic, Air Hong Kong, Polar Air Cargo, and Southern Air, and show the final FTK sum under the general “DHL Express” tag (see breakdown charts). Even with these methods, this under-represents DHL’s total by a considerable margin. Caveat lector.

Back to Freight 50 | See breakdown of carriers groups