AAPA reports stable May growth, warns of protectionist policies’ effect on demand

The Association of Asia Pacific Airlines (AAPA) today reported a 4.9 percent year-over-year increase in its member carriers’ cargo traffic to 6.13 billion FTKs. The AAPA said the growth was driven by generally solid economic growth across the Asia-Pacific region, combined with stronger demand for manufactured goods.

The May growth is slightly lower than the previous month’s increase of 5.8 percent, but generally in line with the overall increase of 5.4 percent for the first five months of 2018 to 29.13 billion FTKs.

However, while growth in airfreight demand has been solid so far this year, there is reason for caution. As AAPA’s director general, Andrew Herdman, points out, “whilst the increase in new orders across the region is still quite encouraging, the recent escalation in protectionist rhetoric could potentially undermine confidence and destabilize global trade flows.”

Another complicating factor is the recent grounding of the entire freighter fleet of Nippon Cargo Airlines (NCA). At first, the carrier said the freighters would be on the ground for only  about a week, while maintenance records were brought up to date, but it now appears the delay in getting the fleet back into operation will be several weeks at least.

In normal circumstances, this would not have a huge impact on overall Asia-Pacific traffic, as the cargo that would have flown in NCA’s eleven 747 freighters would be shifted to other airlines. However, given the current worldwide shortage of maindeck capacity, it is possible that NCA’s grounding will impact AAPA’s June results.