Times are tough for European airfreight with falls of up to 25 per cent in volumes at the continent’s key hubs in December and January. Frankfurt airport, for example, saw tonnage plummet 26 per cent in December and 23.5 percent in January, while Amsterdam saw a 23.9 per cent fall in December. Carriers are suffering similar tonnage falls – Air France-KLM saw a 20.4 per cent fall in traffic in December and 23.3 per cent in January, while Lufthansa fell 21.4 per cent in December and negotiated with unions in late January to put its staff on short working hours. But more recent numbers for March, while still dismal by any measure, have shown some stabilisation of the declines leading to a small glimmer of hope that the crisis has bottomed out.
What measures are carriers, airports, cargo handlers and the rest of the air cargo industry inEurope taking to deal with the downturn and what will the industry look like when it emerges from thecrisis? Has the downturn accelerated the pace ofconsolidation? And with carriers deferring deliveriesof aircraft, what will this mean for manufacturerslike Airbus as well as the conversion sector? Theonce booming Russian cargo market has alsobeen impacted, but key players there appear tohave done slightly better than their counterpartsfrom Western Europe. What is sustaining theRussian market and is business indeed lookingup as Aeroflot-Cargo recently pronounced as itexpanded its China services?
The European Air Cargo Supplement in the June issue of Payload Asia will examine these and other key issues as Europe’s air cargo industry grapples with the harshest downturn it has ever seen.
For advertising in the June supplement, please contact Alvin Lim of Reed Business Information at email: [email protected] or call him at +65 6780 4521 (GMT +8). For editorial coverage please contact Donald Urquhart at email: [email protected] or call him at +65 6780 4396 (GMT +8).