Noting the air cargo story of 2015 – stagnant volumes and falling yields – threatens to become repetitive, WorldACD Market Data said August showed a year-on-year (YoY) volume increase of just 0.9 per cent, while month-on-month (MoM) US$-yields fell again, this time by 1.2 per cent ( yields in Aug 2014 decreased by 0.8 per cent vs July 2014).
One bright spot: Africa and Latin America, the smaller regions in terms of air cargo, bucked the trend. Africa was clearly the region-of-the-month, showing a volume increase in air exports of almost 10 per cent YoY coupled with a MOM yield drop of only 0.2 per cent. Latin America was positively in the news, for the first time in many months with MoM yields increasing by 3.5 per cent for outgoing and by 1.0 per cent for incoming traffic. Unfortunately, it was one of two regions recording a (small) negative volume growth YoY; the other one was North America, WorldACD said.
“Falling yields ought to be good news for shippers and forwarders, yet they seem to take the view that – given the present low fuel cost – prices are not coming down fast enough. Airlines may well take a different view, viz. that the worldwide USD-yield drop of 18 per cent over the past year properly reflects lower fuel cost, since fuel cost had become 1/3 of their total cost before the roughly 50 per cent drop in oil prices in the past year… Whatever the case, airlines must have welcomed the small MoM USD-yield increase in August in more than half of the interregional markets,” WorldACD said pointing to:
• from Africa to Asia Pacific, Latin America and Europe;
• from Latin America to virtually all destination regions;
• from Europe to Africa and Latin America;
• from the Middle East & South Asia (MESA) to Asia Pacific; and
• from North America to all destinations except MESA and Africa.
“Is there any solid good news for airlines at all? There is, but for certain groups of airlines and for certain markets only. We compared the period September 2014-August 2015 (i.e. the most recent 12 months period) with the year 2012, to see the changes in the market position of airlines, grouped by where they come from.”
Of the total airlines from MESA fared best, trumping other carrier groups hands down, WorldACD said, increasing their air cargo volume by 31 per cent against a worldwide growth of 11 per cent. Airlines from Asia Pacific grew by 10 per cent, while European and North American carriers stayed behind the worldwide average, with growth of 5.0 and zero per cent respectively.
MESA airlines performed well above average in the markets to and from their region. The same could not be said for the other groups: Asia Pacific airlines as a group were on average, whilst the groups of European airlines (to some degree) and of American airlines (in particular) lagged behind in the markets to and from their own continent, WorldACD said.
Markets to North America grew by 16 per cent and European carriers figured prominently in this development with a growth of 17 per cent, strongly driven by their exceptional increase in business from Asia Pacific to North America. However, in the total business to and from the area Asia Pacific, European airlines missed out while North American airlines did very well in markets from Europe (+15 per cent).
In one of the top growth markets, Asia Pacific to North America and vice versa, volumes increased by 32 per cent and 19 per cent respectively. “Yet, the beneficiaries of this growth were all non-American: The bulk of the growth was realised by airlines from Asia Pacific, airlines from Europe and MESA showed the highest per centage growth in this market, albeit from a modest base, but airlines from North America actually saw their business shrink in the past three years,” WorldACD said.
