Worldwide air cargo tonnages have increased in the last week of August, according to data from WorldACD.

The air cargo data provider said this follows three consecutive weeks of declines since the beginning of August. It added that a similar pattern as last year in August, although this year the decline has been stronger.

"Looking at week 34 (August 22-28), worldwide chargeable weight increased +4% compared with the previous week, and the average worldwide rate also increased, based on the more than 350,000 weekly transactions covered by WorldACD's data," it said.

When comparing the last two weeks with the preceding two weeks (2Wo2W), however, WorldACD said the trends are still negative, with a decline of the average worldwide rates at -1% and a chargeable weight decrease of -3%, in a stable capacity environment.

Volumes slowly picking-up

WorldACD said while capacity remained "broadly stable" across that two-week period, tonnages seemed to slowly recover from most of the air freight origin regions.

It added that notably, volumes from Africa increased +6%, while Europe outbound volumes dropped by -8%, on a 2Wo2W basis.

"Those volume trends were also reflected on a lane-by-lane basis, with Africa to Europe increasing +7%, while significant declines in volumes were recorded from Europe to Central & South America (-12%) and the Asia Pacific (-11%), on a 2Wo2W basis," it said.

WorldACD noted that taking a longer-term perspective for the overall global market, the last two weeks showed a drop in chargeable weight of -10% compared with last year (YoY), despite a capacity increase of +9% (though not from the Asia Pacific), while rates increased +4%.