More confirmation of the sustained recovery in the global air cargo market came today courtesy of the the Association of Asia Pacific Airlines (AAPA) with statistics showing that both air cargo and passenger markets continued to show further improvement in April despite a week of disruptions to traffic in and out of Europe as a result of the Icelandic volcanic eruption. Air cargo demand remained strong, maintaining the positive trend of recent months, with 32.1 per cent growth in freight tonne kilometres (FTK) in April, compared to the very weak market conditions last year. Perhaps most promising was the that fact that even with a 13.2 per cent expansion in freight capacity, the average international cargo load factor for Asia Pacific carriers increased by 10.3 percentage points to reach 71.9 per cent.