Cargo volumes at Brussels Airport surge for second straight month

Brussels Airport reported an increase in air freight volumes transported for the second consecutive month, up 9.9 percent compared to the same period last year.

“This result is much more positive than the overall trend since, on a global scale, freight volume is continuing to fall largely due to the very steep decrease in belly cargo, i.e. the cargo on board of passenger aircraft, which covers 50 percent of the volumes transported around the world,” the airport stated in a media release.

The airport recorded an increase of 25.3 percent in express services while full cargo volumes witnessed an increase of 89 percent. These robust increases compensated for the lack of freight capacity on board of passenger aircraft (-72 percent).

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These additional flights are being operated by freighters as well as passenger aircraft which are converted for freight transport. These additional operations are mainly carried out during the day, which means that the number of night flights at Brussels Airport have not increased.

“For the second month in a row we, the Brussels Airport Cargo Community, managed to see nice growth in our cargo volumes. Big thanks to my team, our airlines, forwarders, handlers, truckers, GSAs, the Air Cargo Belgium team, governement agencies and all others that contributed to this result. Together, we make the difference, together we are BRUcargo,” said Steven Polmans, director – Cargo and Logistics, Brussels Airport Company in a LinkedIn post.

When truck freight is added (which fell by 28.4 percent), the volume of cargo transported in July at Brussels Airport amounted to 55,729 tonnes, an increase of 0.3 percent compared to the same period last year.