2020 air cargo volume may drop 20%, IATA says

Market research firm World ACD published its own figures showing a year-over-year drop in cargo volume of 3% for January and February, not adjusting for the fact there were 29 days in February this year.

Carriers made less money too, with yield decreasing about 5% and airlines losing 8% of revenues compared to the start of 2019. Airline losses are expected to be much greater in the coming months due to the global disruption of supply chains from the pandemic.

IATA on Tuesday estimated that airlines stand to lose up to $252 billion in passenger revenue this year.

In its bulletin, World ACD said some carriers are bucking the downward trend in business. In Europe, for example, one carrier saw a 42% increase in volume, it said. Big forwarders also experienced a range of performance. In Europe, the group lost 6.5% air volume, with a company that lost 23% of volume on one end and another that gained 9%.

The grounding of most international flights to China also eliminated cargo space that shippers rely on, driving rates for dedicated freighters to double and creating an unusual situation in which inbound yields to China were higher than in the other direction — a function of the shutdown in Chinese manufacturing and the influx of emergency medical supplies.

But data provided by Freight Investor Services, a freight derivatives broker, suggests Asia-Pacific prices may have peaked, with the trans-Atlantic market now the most volatile.

The TAC Index, which benchmarks current rates, shows that it now costs $2.74 per kilogram for a company to ship goods from Frankfurt, Germany, to North America, a 57% increase in the past week alone.The high airfreight rates are one reason passenger airlines are starting to deploy passenger aircraft into dedicated cargo service, even though they have a smaller payload than a full freighter.