PETER CONWAY LONDON
It took a while for the Asian downturn to affect the air cargo industry, but last year the bad news really hit home.
There is little hiding from the fact that 1998 was a dismal year for the air cargo industry. And final figures from the Airports Council International (ACI) only serve to prove the point, with growth of little more than 1% worldwide, following the outright decline in Asia. Admittedly, more recent returns for the first half of this year put growth back at around 4-5%. But if the air freight business is reviving then it is not before time.
Last year's fall from grace was particularly tough for an air cargo sector that had boomed for much of the 1990s, growing on average twice as fast as the passenger business. A glance back at the 1997 figures from ACI, shows how things used to be. Although the Asian economic crisis started that year, it had no noticeable effect on cargo until well after the traditional pre-Christmas peak. Asian airports such as Hong Kong and Seoul chalked up rises of around 15%, while Manila managed nearly 27%. But in 1998 cargo traffic collapsed, as the red ink on the ranking demonstrates (see page 66). Against such a background, Taipei's near static volumes in 1998 look an impressive achievement.
The big four European cargo hubs - Frankfurt, London Heathrow, Amsterdam Schiphol and Paris Charles de Gaulle (CDG) - also had a bad year. All four airports have been putting on an impressive enough turn of speed at times during recent years. Schiphol, perfectly positioned for many airlines as a cargo trucking hub, has stormed into the top four, with annual growth hitting 15% four years ago. But by 1997, noise restrictions had slowed its expansion to half that speed. CDG, which has space to expand and the 24h operation its three rivals lack, also grew in double figures in 1997, while overcrowded Heathrow managed to squeeze yet another 10% more cargo in that year.
While Paris and Frankfurt lost traffic in 1998, London and Amsterdam managed to keep growth rolling but only just. Heathrow managed a respectable 3%, partly due to larger aircraft with more belly capacity but also to booming exports, which saw a 10% growth in the British Airways freight business.
In the USA, airports are protected by a strong domestic market, which accounts for about one-third of global air cargo volumes alone. Without it, most US hubs would not be in the top 50, including Memphis, which heads the cargo table. But the international flights feeding into this FedEx hub are only a fraction of the size of its enormous overnight US network. Other US express hubs making it into the top 50 include Louisville (UPS), Dayton (Emery Worldwide), Indianapolis (US Postal Service), Toledo (BAX Global) and Cincinnati (DHL).
Without these, only five US airports really figure on the global air freight scene. Top of the pile is Los Angeles, which always seems to nudge ahead of Miami, by far the biggest and most important hub for Latin American cargo for all the Americas. Both airports failed to escape the world's economic woes in 1998. Los Angeles was hit by a slowdown in US exports to Asia and Miami continued to suffer from the economic upset in Latin America that has slowed its growth markedly over the past three years.
New York continues to be the world's largest cargo destination. While Kennedy's near static cargo figures have been edging it down the world rankings for years, Newark has been taking all the growth, boosted by a strong FedEx presence and a thriving express business. It even managed a good return last year.
Dallas and Houston have made strenuous efforts to build international cargo traffic in recent years and recorded good growth rates, but are still mainly domestic hubs. Atlanta has attracted freighter operations from almost all the major Asian airlines and is slowly climbing the rankings as a result.
Elsewhere in the rankings, some airports have managed to buck the trend. Shanghai is taking over from Hong Kong as the centre of Chinese trade, Beijing is surging ahead. Johannesburg was also a winner in 1998.
Brussels, European hub for DHL, is showing itself as an increasingly popular alternative to overcrowded Schiphol, growing by double digits over 1997 and 1998. It is still a long way behind Europe's big four, but at present growth rates it is gaining fast.
Source: Airline Business
