Air Cargo Volumes Stable and High in June: IATA

Air cargo volumes were stable at a high level in June, as in May, IATA reported.

In relation to that trend, industry-wide freight ton-kilometers (CTK) increased 9.9% in June 2021 compared to the same month in 2019, a small improvement over the (revised down) increase of 8.5 % in May.

Perhaps most revealing for IATA is that the seasonally adjusted (SA) trend has stabilized somewhat in the last two months.

In a broader context, the volume of world trade deepened its deceleration in May, with a month-on-month drop of 0.3%, reported the Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis (CPB).

Also in April and compared to the immediately previous month, this indicator registered a 0.1% drop, after correcting the initial estimate of growth of 0.5 percent.

Air cargo

SA’s CTK increased 0.2% month-on-month in June, following a 0.3% decline (revised downward) in May, the first since the initial impact of the crisis in April 2020.

This implies that the strong growth rate compared to 2019 is due to gains made in the second half of 2020 and early 2021.

That said, IATA added, May and June are typically slow months for air cargo, so this does not point to a serious slowdown.

So far this year, global CTKs increased 8.0% compared to the same period in 2019, the strongest first half of the year since 2017.

In terms of contributions to the growth rate in total CTKs compared to 2019, North America had the largest impact by far (5.9 percentage points out of 9.9), followed by the Middle East (2.1 points) and Europe (1.6 points).

In fact, there are signs that air cargo volumes may start to climb again in the coming months.

Supply chain conditions continue to be very favorable to air cargo, as evidenced by the record level of the US inventory-to-sales ratio.

Historically, a drop in the index has been associated with strong growth in air cargo traffic, as it means that companies do not have enough inventory to meet growing demand.