Global air cargo capacity declines by 17% in the last two weeks: Seabury report

The Covid-19 pandemic is a health and humanitarian crisis, and it is also an economic shock. Accenture has been providing weekly updates throughout the crisis on air cargo capacity changes based on actual flight movements. With the assistance of Seabury Consulting, now part of Accenture's travel industry practice, it is able to provide insights and data on air, express and ocean freight demand and capacity on a global basis.

Global air cargo capacity declined 17 per cent in the last two weeks compared to last year
Most trade lanes again show double-digit declines versus last year. The Transpacific is the only trade lane that remained relatively stable. Latin America - North America air cargo capacity is back to double-digit decline.

Note: Thickness of arrows is representative of May 2020 capacity in metric tonnes, direct flights only; all flows indicate region-to-region capacity; regions are indicated by color coding; 1) Total cargo capacity includes widebody passenger and all freighter flights; 2) 30 Dec 2019 – 12 Jan 2020, all dates measured in UTC.

Source: Seabury Consulting, Part of Accenture Capacity Tracking database, Seabury Consulting, Part of Accenture analysis (January 2021)

Air trade is almost back to 2019 levels as it dropped only 2 per cent in November
Air trade demand recovers steadily despite capacity constraints; however, air trade is still highly affected by the strong declines in Q2 2020, with January to November 2020 air trade declining 10 per cent compared to 2019. Demand for air freight has fallen much less than capacity, strongly increasing load factors.

Note: International air trade and international (direct) capacity only; Capacity for all freighter aircraft and widebody belly aircraft only; Source: Seabury Consulting, Part of Accenture Capacity Tracking and Global Trade databases, Seabury Consulting, Part of Accenture analysis (January 2021).