Air cargo tonnages build ahead of Lunar New Year: WorldACD

Global air cargo tonnages continued to build in the final full week of January, ahead of Lunar New Year (LNY) on February 10, taking volumes for the last two weeks and for January as a whole well above their levels this time last year, according to the latest figures from WorldACD Market Data. “Preliminary figures for January as a whole show a 14 percent increase compared with January 2023, based on the more than 440,000 weekly transactions covered by WorldACD’s data, although the figures are skewed by LNY falling on January 22 last year with the week following LNY typically seeing a significant drop in tonnages ex-Asia Pacific. Nevertheless, there has been an underlying trend of higher year-on-year tonnages for several months, boosted by strong e-commerce traffic demand, ex-Asia Pacific since the final quarter (Q4) of last year and some limited conversion of sea freight to air and sea-air cargo in recent weeks due to the disruptions to container shipping in the Red Sea.”