Boeing forecasts steady out-performance for air cargo

Growing world trade, increasing demand for transport of perishable and time-sensitive commodities will drive the market, states the report. This would represent a marginal slowing of the 5.7% growth (measured in tonne kilometres) seen over the past thirty years, although Boeing observes that its long-term forecasts tend to be "conservative, compared to actual industry performance".

On a regional basis the differences in growth are not as great as might be imagined. Asia-Pacific may well grow at 6.3%, with Latin America and the Middle East at 6.1% and 6.2%, respectively. However, Europe and North America will still expand at 4.7% and 4.8%, respectively.

The make-up of the world’s freighter fleet will change as fuel efficiency continues to be an imperative, leading to an emphasis on size; however the resultant fleet structure may be more nuanced. For example, the air express companies are likely to be attracted by the medium wide-body aircraft which may have higher gross unit-costs but have lower trip costs. Medium wide-body freighters also offer greater flexibility in the scheduling and frequency of shipments.

Overall, however, the number of mid-sized aircraft will be squeezed by the growth in the number of large purpose-built freighters on inter-continental routes and of smaller ’standard‘ aircraft converted from passenger service. The latter are attractive due to being cheap to buy on the second-hand market. Indeed, two-thirds of the entire freighter market will be second-hand.

Obviously long term economic projections are fraught with difficulty. Many of the assumptions such as regional and national GDP growth underlying Boeing’s projections are highly variable, influenced by short-term factors. None-the-less, looking at Boeing’s numbers, the growth of air cargo volumes over the past thirty years appears to be remarkably constant; despite the volatility of the underlying economy. Admittedly the structure of the air freight market will change, with emerging markets and longer-range trades becoming even more important; yet a forecast of 5.6% does not appear to be unreasonable in the light of historical data. If true the air freight sector might prove to be a quite attractive niche within the wider logistics industry.

Quelle: eyefortransport
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