Air Freight and Passenger Figures Released Showing Increase in Cargo Capacity

WORLDWIDE - The International Air Transport Association (IATA) has announced industry performance statistics for 2015 for both passenger and air freight carriage in the course of the year. The statistics show that the global cargo markets managed a 2.3% expansion in freight and mail tonne kilometres (FTKs). This outstripped a capacity increase of 5.8% decreasing freight load factor by 1.6% pp. This information was included in the recently released 60th Edition of the World Air Transport Statistics (WATS), the yearbook of the airline industry’s performance.

This digest includes a plethora of information including airline ranking information showing top airlines and alliance statistics; rankings in terms of international, domestic and total scheduled passengers, freight tonnes carried, passenger kilometres, number of employees and aircraft as well as by operating revenues and by operating profit. It now contains a total of eleven different rankings. Full details of the contents can be seen here and the WATS yearbook itself can be purchased direct from IATA via this link. Tony Tyler, IATA’s Director General and CEO commented:

"Last year airlines safely carried 3.6 billion passengers, the equivalent of 48% of the Earth’s population, and transported 52.2 million tonnes of cargo worth around $6 trillion. In doing so, we supported some $2.7 trillion in economic activity and 63 million jobs,"

Much of the world’s air cargo is of course transported in the belly holds of commercial passenger aircraft but the the top five airlines ranked by total freight tonnes carried on scheduled services were:

• FedEx Express (7.1 million)
• United Parcel Service (4.5 million)
• Emirates Airline (2.5 million)
• Cathay Pacific Airways (1.6 million)
• Korean Air (1.5 million)