WorldACD reported that air cargo’s March figures shows double-digit growth worldwide with China leading the increase by a “large margin”— consistent with the country's phase of recovery from Covid-19 disruptions.

The air cargo data provider said worldwide air cargo was up 21% year-on-year in March, although compared to 2020's performance, it said the first half of that month saw a 0.2% decrease on a year earlier, while the second half was up 44%.

"To make any sense of this percentage we need to revisit the detailed results for March 2020, the most two-faced month in air cargo living memory. YoY change in the period March 1-15, 2021, stood at -0.2%, but the YoY growth in the second half of the month was +44%, a clear reminder that the first lockdown started to bite air cargo by mid-March 2020," WorldACD said in a statement.

When comparing with previous years’ performance, air cargo demand in March 2021 was only marginally lower than the same month in 2018 and 2019.

WorldACD noted that this is “more remarkable” when the amount of capacity that has been taken out of the market compared with 2018 and 2019 is taken into account.

The data provider also noted that year-on-year load factor improvements in each of the three first months of 2021, range between 15 and 20 percentage points.

Meanwhile, for the full first quarter of 2021, chargeable weight worldwide was up 7.7% from 2020, but still 2% below 2019's level.

China leads recovery

“To no one’s surprise, China leads the first quarter air cargo growth tables by a large margin,” WorldACD said. “The whole Asia Pacific area increased by 19% year on year (outbound), followed by the Americas (10% year on year in the north, 6% year on year in central & south). Europe and Africa remained the same, whilst the origin Middle East/South Asia dropped by 10% year on year.”

It added categories such as vulnerable & high-tech, flowers and live animals, however, did better than in first quarter 2019, with the first mentioned vertical growing by 22%.

The air cargo data provider noted that performance in March was also “varied” when looking at volume developments for the 30 largest markets first.

“For six of them (the origins US Atlantic South, USA Midwest, Taiwan, Thailand, Belgium and Kenya), March 2021 was simply the best month since January 2018. The same was true for the destination markets China-East, South Korea, Japan, Belgium, the Netherlands and US-Midwest,” WorldACD reported.

It added that other top-origins, notably China North East and Central, France, UK, India, and Australia, have not yet recovered.

“Their month of March remained more than 20% below their best month over the past three years. This is also the case for the destinations Australia, Canada East, China Northeast, Spain, South Africa and US Northeast,” it added.

Drastic rate changes cited

WorldACD went on to note that while volumes were changing during the period, the most notable development was in rates.

It said that over the first quarter rates are up by around 61% compared with last year.

“Not only do the rate increases highlight the capacity shortage and the short term financial influence of the pandemic, they may cause further changes in cargo capacity made available by passenger airlines. After all, with rates on full freighter flights up by 32% year on year, whilst those on passenger aircraft almost doubled, airlines could be tempted to take a fresh look at the capacity they make available for air cargo.”

“Do we see that already? Freighter capacity in March increased 7 percentage points less than cargo capacity on passenger aircraft, while the worldwide rate increased every week from mid-March to mid-April,” it added.