European Cargo operators are still suffering from demand declines, even the month of July was very difficult for Europeans

July was a difficult month for Europeans cargo airlines as Lufthansa, Air France-KLM, IAG Cargo and Finnair. These all airlines showed demand decline during the month of July due to change in transporter strategies and tough market conditions. The four cargo airlines showed a 7.6 percent slide in cargo volumes during July, which compares with a drop of 5.7 percent during the first seven months of the year.

Finnair showed the largest decline in volumes in July which was 16.7 percent year on year slide to 69m revenue cargo tonne-km (RCTK). Finnair showed the second largest drop in percentage this year. In July cargo traffic of Finnair almost completely contained to belly cargo on scheduled flights, while Finnair does still use intra-European freighters.

The elimination of freighters means that the airline’s capacity was dropped from 5.5 percent on the previous year to 123m available ton-km (ATK).

The demand in decline more than about supply and had a negative influence on the load factor of the airline, which drop to 56.3 percent against 63.9 percent a year before. Air France-KLM also showed the largest drop in traffic by showing10. 6 percent drop on a year before to 752m RCTK.  Air France-KLM showed the smallest percentage point decline in load factors of the three that report this figure as levels dropped to 57.8% compared with 59.4% a year before.

This is another drop to move aside from freighters in favor of the belly hold as the carrier group’s cargo partition go through a restructuring.

Last year during the month of July the total freighter capacity of the group was dropped by 31 percent, while the whole capacity was 8.1 percent behind a year before. The next decline in volume in the month of July is shown by IAG cargo which contains British Airways and Iberia.

IAG cargo recorded a 7 percent drop to 422m cargo ton-km. The group showed the largest decline, so far this year and 6.1 percent decline recorded in the month of June. The Lufthansa Group, which controls Lufthansa Cargo and Swiss Air showed a 4.3 percent year on year drop in traffic to 838m revenue cargo tonne-km (RCTK). This figure showed its second highest decrease of the year. According to airline, it was not able to sell its entire capacity, which was up 2.7 percent, which actually came from the capacity growth of passenger airline. Therefore, the load factor has dropped by 4.6 percent to 63.1 percent.