Air cargo gallops ahead

[photopress:cargolux.jpg,full,alignright]China Air Transport Market (Investment Analysis), 2006 is a new report from Research and Markets. At the moment the report is only available in Chinese.

The report shows that air cargo is increasing at a faster rate than air passenger travel. From January to August, 2005, the total tonne kilometer (a typical way of measuring air cargo) for air transport is 16,646 billion, up 11 per cent compared with the same period of 2004. The passenger traffic is 89.5172 million persons, up 10 per cent compared with the same period last year. (Note carefully that this is no way suggests that air cargo is anywhere near as large or as important as air passenger traffic. Merely that it is expanding at a faster rate.) You can look at the figures another way. The total passenger kilometers is 131.77409 billion, up 10.5 per cent compared with the same period last year. In comparison the total freight tonne carried is 1.9017 million, up 13 per cent as compared with the same period of last year, and the total freight tonnes kilometers is 4.92079 billion, up 13.2 per cent.

This means that using almost any unit of measurement cargo carrying aviation is expanding at a faster rate than passenger aviation even though it is nowhere near as large.

The report says: ‘The reform of civil aviation system is continuously deepening and the civil aviation market is constantly developing to welcome the world. Stimulated by the growth of China’s economy, the upgrade of consuming level, and the liberalization of aviation industry, China’s air transport industry will gradually enter the stage of rapid growth, and it will go on leading the global growth for a fairly long period in the future.’
Source: Research and Markets