The end of year traffic figures from European airlines sum up year 2019 was tough for the air cargo business.
Figures just released by Lufthansa show that cargo carried by its various airline businesses in 2019 was down by 2.1% year on year to 10.7 bn revenue cargo tonne kms (RCTK).
Meanwhile, cargo capacity increased by 6.3%, pulling down its average cargo load factor for the year by 5.3 percentage points to 61.4%. December saw cargo traffic decline by 3.6% to 865m RCTK.
But Lufthansa was not alone in seeing its cargo business come under pressure in 2019. Air France KLM reported a 2.2% decline in cargo traffic last year to 8.5 bn revenue tonne kms. KLM saw its traffic decline by 3.1% while at Air France there was a 0.5% drop off. The overall cargo load factor at the airline group for 2019 was down by 1.9 percentage points on the previous year to 51.5%.
Performance in December also lagged behind the rest of the year as the airline group reported a 4.1% drop-off in demand to 734m RTK. Finally, IAG saw its cargo traffic for 2019 decline by 2.4% year on year to 5.6 bn cargo tonne kms (CTK). British Airways was down by 4.2% on 2018 levels, while Iberia was up by 4.1% and Aer Lingus was 0.6% behind the previous year.
December was also a tough month for IAG as traffic dropped by 7.8% to 458 m CTK.
Source : Various Agencies