Demand for air cargo around the world stabilized over the past four months at levels well above the pre-pandemic period, IATA reported.

Industry-wide freight ton-kilometers (CTK) increased 7.7% in August 2021 compared to August 2019, which is only modestly slower than July (8.8%) and well above the long-term monthly average of 4.7 percent.

After removing seasonality from the data, global cargo volumes continued to trend sideways.

Growth and CTK levels were also stable in most regions, although at different rates.

African airlines reported the fastest CTK expansion for another month, at 32.4% versus August 2019 before the crisis, followed by North American airlines (19.3 percent).

On the contrary, the Latin American CTK continued to fall sharply (-13.2 percent).

Air cargo 

For now, IATA indicated that the outlook for the air cargo business remains positive, but growth in some of the main drivers of demand has slowed recently and limitations related to the pandemic have increased pressure on capacity. available load.

One of the key indicators that continues to augur well for cargo demand in the short term is low stocks for businesses.

Historically, this pattern has been associated with increasing air cargo volumes, as companies and carriers tend to favor air cargo over other modes of transportation to meet strong customer demand as quickly as possible.

That said, growth in this metric is not as fast as in previous months (global production PMI at 51.9 in August vs. 54.4 in July) due to weaker results in the United States, the Eurozone, and Asia.

A similar trend has also been observed in new export orders, another important driver of air cargo demand, where expansion slowed globally and turned into contraction in emerging economies.

In total, although the latest developments in the two indicators mentioned above are consistent with the growing demand for air cargo, IATA concluded that they are less favorable than in previous months and show that global manufacturing growth has peaked.