News / Cargolux highs and lows: running a freight airline not for the faint-hearted

© Faustasyan |

The shipping lines, with their multi-billion dollar profits (and almost no taxes), are the ones making all the headlines, but the all-cargo airlines, presumably much to the chagrin of their passenger-carrying cousins, are also having a stellar time.

There is no better illustration of the highs and lows of freighter airlines than the chart below, compiled by The Loadstar over the past 11 years.

From an $18.3m loss in 2011, the carrier barely broke even until 2015. Then two good years, a ...