News / Air cargo chiefs appear bullish as yields level off and load factors improve in H1

05/08/2014

There appears to be consensus: air cargo has had a good half-year. Not outstanding, but decent. And, most importantly, yields have finally stopped their decline.

In fact, according to WorldACD, for the first time in 30 months there was a year-on-year increase in worldwide yields: 0.9% in June.

Yields are, nevertheless, still 10% down on the first half of 2011, but bit by bit they seem to be improving. Drewry’s latest east-west air freight price index shows “buy rates” for June, a ...

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Ed Kerwin
August 05, 2014 at 7:47 pm
Measuring cargo load factors is not as straight forward as passenger load factors where one passenger fits in one seat. Using FTK and ASK to calculate load factors may be consistent, but may not reflect reality. In addition, if IATA includes the capacity on the large number of narrow body aircraft that serve regions such as the US domestic market, there may be a large amount of capacity that is not sellable in a market that is driven by passenger demand. These factors can produce a distorted picture of what the airlines experience and differ from the methods they use to measure their performance.

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