IATA’s latest data relating to the global air freight market for July shows optimism. Overall, demand (measured in FTKs) increased by 5% compared to the same month in 2015 and this has been acknowledged as being the fastest growth recorded over the last 18 months. Equally, freight capacity (measured in available freight tonne kilometres) increased by 5.2% year-on-year.
In terms of geographical regions, the biggest change was in Europe (which saw an increase in demand of 7.2%) and the Middle East, which posted a growth figure of 6.7%. However, all this good news has to be tempered with the fact that global trade growth remains somewhat sluggish and that business confidence is still not strong. Aside from the aforementioned regions, the US saw freight volumes up by 4.1% and capacity climb by 3.4%; and Asia, too, benefited, with a 4.9% increase in demand over the previous July. The losers were Latin America, which still struggles because of its financial and political difficulties: here, demand was down by 5.6%; and Africa, which recorded a 6.8% decrease in year-on-year freight demand in July.
