WorldACD said air cargo volumes saw double digit year-on-year (YoY) growth in the last five months from April to August, but the rate of increase is declining steadily as rates continued to spike up in the five weeks to mid-September.

In a statement, it said in April the YoY change stood at 53%, in June at 31% and in August at 21%. Overall volume for the first eight months of 2021 is 22% above the level in 2020.

Following the trend in recent months, reported WorldACD, the volume pattern of 2021 is not very different from in 2019.

“Year-to-Date (YTD) 2021 compared with YtD 2019 (Yo2Y) shows only a 0.6% difference, as illustrated in the chart below. One would almost think it is business as usual, or business as we were used to pre-Covid, but the reality is quite different for many cargo players,” WorldACD said.

It said origin regions Africa, Europe and Middle East & South Asia are below 2019 volume levels as of July and “this has not changed,” while noting that those in Asia Pacific, Central & South America or North America, areas with high single digit growth.

WorldACD said also within the regions themselves, we see quite some differences.

The top-5 cities per region, based on Yo2Y development of chargeable weight for outbound plus inbound, saw airports, handlers, forwarders, airlines and GSAs affected differently, it added.

Looking at the individual performance of the 100 largest forwarders in the world, it is worth noting that only very few came close to the Yo2Y worldwide average, WorldACD said.

In the period through to August 2021, it added that the worldwide USD rate/yield was 19% higher than in 2020, and still 81% higher than in 2019 (Yo2Y).

Meanwhile, general cargo, pharma/temp and vulnerable/high-tech are performing close to the Yo2Y average rate increase, whereas perishables and DGR have seen lower rate increases.

“Rates continued to go up in the five weeks ending on September 19, with the worldwide average USD rate up by 10%. In the same period in 2019, the average rate went up by less than 1%,” it added, noting that there were very large differences reported from one market to another, “bringing to mind the old saying that the devil is in the details.”