Ecommerce platforms cancel flights and slash capacity – market is 'a mess'
As anticipated, ecommerce platforms have begun cancelling flights and cutting back on capacity, while Chinese ...
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By Alex Lennane
IATA has robustly defended its methodology after a column in The Loadstar this week claimed current load factor reporting was doing the air cargo industry a disservice.
Niall van de Wouw argues in his piece that the standard methodology for calculating freight load factors is misleading: dividing freight tonne km (FTKs) by available tonne km (ATKs) does not account for the volume capacity (in cubic metres) – which is essentially the bottleneck, not the weight capacity (in tonnes).
But IATA defended its position.
“IATA totally refutes accusations that the ...
Comment on this article
Stan Wraight
September 08, 2017 at 3:46 pmNiall is right, and the statistics are wrong and everyone should admit it. This missing professional evaluation should not be just dismissed, many an entity even Boeing with the initial “full freighter equivalent” methodology got it wrong. IATA rules such as generic 1:6 volume ratios for example, minimum charges as well are all based on 707/DC8 thinking. Get with it, long distance point to point with large aircraft make this an imperative for all CEO/CFO and cargo managers to understand that new math is needed to show the actual contribution of cargo.
still missing elements...
September 11, 2017 at 3:32 pmAlex… the article and rebuttal by IATA are still missing elements that were previously observed by myself and others… different cargo product & commodity densities, directional imbalances due to global trade patterns and the inherent differences between freighter ops and cargo/pax bellies not even rating a mention as causal factors that make such metrics difficult to compare in a fair and even manner!
Bart Jan Haasbeek
October 05, 2017 at 11:06 amInteresting response from IATA, a bit bullish, not supportive and ignoring this is an important topic. IATA’s response mentioned that Niall “just failed to reflect the realities of the market”; but IATA, on the contrary the open letter is exactly doing this, the reality is, the is market changing is not just for the last decade.
There are many indicators justifying a serious study should be initiated and no doubt this would result in a recommendation that a revised calculation method would be desirable. Everybody knows that the figures are distorted, just working around them and/or using different KPI’s.