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Project Selfie: measuring capacity utilisation in the air cargo industry needs an overhaul; the current standard poorly reflects how full planes really are
The results are in.
Nineteen airlines, representing nearly 25% of the global market; data on 166,000 widebody and freighter flights for the months of Apr-Jun 2017; 2.5m tons of air cargo; and many, many man hours.
It was a big ask. We initiated Project Selfie in a period when the peak, budget and holiday seasons all came together.
It’s no wonder that several ...
Comment on this article
Derek Jones
December 14, 2017 at 10:42 amAs most airfreight is volume, and therefore charged at 6000cc/kg, I agree that volume is a more sensible measure than weight alone. But neither metric gives a totally accurate measure: there is still a fair amount of dense cargo around, and (in a new world of measurement by volume) that will give the appearance of underperformance, too.
The next question is what you regard as the volume capacity: the cubic dimension of the hold space, or the theoretical maximum profiled pallet volume, multiplied by the number of pallet positions? And what about bulk cargo? Whether palletised or loose, you could never fill every cc of “available” space.
The industry certainly needs measures, but all systems are imperfect. In any event, volumes and tonnages matter less than revenue and yield, and matter even less when there is clearly still a big gap between capacity and utilisation.
Jonathan Holmes
February 12, 2019 at 7:27 amI’m interested to know your methodology for determining the weight capacity of the aircraft surveyed. To my mind, the “dynamic” capacity would be the gross weight capacity of the aircraft which varies significantly for passenger aircraft on a per trip basis. Freighter weight capacity is generally less variable but there is still a fair amount of variability based on segment length (especially if SL is beyond max payload range)
The volume capacity of freighters is fixed. For passenger aircraft, there is cargo volume variability based on baggage load and holds configuration. This variation, however, is a simple addition/subtraction of ULD units. Much less dynamic than ACL.