Slight uptick for flowers in air cargo

If hopes went up after the month July, in which the air cargo performance was less bad than in the months before, August brought the industry back to earth: a YoY weight loss of 7.1% worldwide was accompanied by a yield decrease (in USD) of 9.4%. The resulting worldwide revenue drop (measured in USD) of almost 16% is not exactly the performance airlines were waiting for. The various regions of the world contributed in roughly the same measure to the decline; exceptions were Africa (volume +1.6% YoY) and – at the other end of the spectrum – the Middle East and South Asia (-10.4% YoY).

Looking at the year to date, i.e. the 8 months from the January through August 2019, worldwide air cargo volumes were down by almost 5% and yields (in USD) by 7.1% for general cargo, and by 3.8% for special cargo categories (flowers were the only category with a slight yield improvement of 1%). In terms of overall revenues, the origins Europe and Asia Pacific have been hardest hit in the year so far, with decreases of 15.3% resp. 11.6% (in USD), or 9.9% resp. 6.1% (in EUR).