As this year draws to a close there is at least some comfort in the fact volumes have picked up in the last few months and yields have stabilised. It’s a bit of cold comfort, but at least things don’t look to get any worse. Most in the market seem reasonably confident that the current situation will continue through the beginning of the new year and hopefully things will improve from there.

 
At least one of the underlying factors – the massive infusion of belly capacity – are not going to go away and in fact will continue. But with a movement north in the price of oil in recent weeks there may be some added capacity rationalization of older freighters that have been happily pressed into service because of record low fuel prices.

 
Next year will surely see the continued focus on speciality products with pharma and e-commerce being the buzz words in the industry. Just how and how much the e-commerce revolution will help the air cargo sector remains to be seen as many air cargo supply chain players look at how they can better tap this new era of commerce.

 
In this issue we have some interesting insights from three very different players in the market – the Volga-Dnepr Group, ECS Group and MAS Kargo. All offer intriguing insights as to how they are adapting to this new normal in the air cargo sector.

 
From all of us at Payload Asia we wish you the very best in the New Year and look forward to continuing to bring you the latest news and information on the industry in 2017!