The gradual route to recovery to pre-COVID market conditions continued for the global air cargo industry in August for a fourth-consecutive month, according to fresh volume and yield data from two of the industry’s leading analysts, CLIVE Data Services and TAC Index.
Year-on-year growth for the full four weeks of August showed a further narrowing of the gap in international air cargo volumes to -17% versus August 2019. This compares to a -41% YOY disparity in April, since when month-on-month demand has improved. Capacity gains, however, have added to the downward pressure on both CLIVE’s ‘dynamic loadfactor’ and average yields.
In August, the receding gap in the year-over-year decline between capacity and demand resulted in a global dynamic loadfactor drop from 70% in July to 68% last month, but this is still exceptionally high considering that August is traditionally air cargo’s ‘slack season’ – registering at 8% points higher than the corresponding performance in August 2019.
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Looking at traffic flows from China, CLIVE Data Services’ analyses for August confirms that previous concerns of hardly any demand for capacity once the PPE peak subsided have not materialised. Volumes in the last week of August were ‘just’ 4% less than for this same week in 2019, “not great, but by no means a disaster,” commented Managing Director, Niall van de Wouw
He added: “Our August data shows the year-over-year decline in volumes is decreasing. The capacity crunch is still there but is becoming slightly less and, as a result, loadfactors and yields are going down and becoming closer to pre-COVID levels, even though they are still elevated. Airline cargo departments have never been in control of their own destiny, and they’re still not, but they are in control of the present and short-term in deciding where to place their cargo capacity. Whereas cargo has often been regarded as the ‘freeloader’ of the airline industry because it has always been a by-product of far greater passenger revenues, right now it is passengers who are the ‘freeloaders’ because cargo is the main source of revenue for many airlines and helping to get passenger flights back into the air.
“The massive uncertainty is when will passenger demand return and reverse the tables? The huge idle fleet of passenger aircraft needs to start flying again but no one is expecting that to happen soon in terms of great quantities of capacity. In the meantime, air cargo will continue to have its day in the sun and combination carriers will have to hope this can sustain their slimmed-down operations until passenger confidence and bookings return.” With capacity ex-China around 19% less than in August 2019, air cargo yields on this lane remained at an elevated level; approximately 25% higher than a year ago (basket CN/HK->EUR) and about 35% in the same period on the Transpacific (basket CN/HK->US), according to TAC Index market intelligence. The general pricing difference on the two compared trade routes more than doubled YOY. In August, the price decline over July 2020 was 5% on Transpacific lanes and 2.5% on routes from HK/CN to EU. The weekly fluctuations become visible when looking at a more detailed level; for example, PVG-AMS in the period June 29-August 31 show prices increased by 22%, peaking on August 3 at 10 % higher than on the last day of the month.
