What has happened to the air cargo market in recent months, where is it going and how will it cope with the great Covid-19 vaccine airlift?
Those are just some of the questions addressed by Tom Crabtree, regional director, marketing, air cargo, Boeing Commercial Airplanes and Leonard Rodrigues, head of revenue management and network planning, Etihad Cargo, on sister site Arabian Business’ new series, Back in Business.
Speaking to Aviation Business recently, Crabtree said the market is undergoing a severe capacity crunch with the drop in passenger planes in operation.
“Narrow-bodies are the world’s biggest components of the jet transport fleet but don’t carry much cargo in the lower hold, their primary function is to carry people and baggage,” he said. “Typical load on a 737 or A320 plane is about 100kg to 200kg of cargo per departure.
“What’s interesting is that low-cost carriers like Air Arabia, flydubai, Ryanair and EasyJet, many of those airlines do not carry any cargo whatsoever. Ryanair has not carried any cargo officially since 1997. The world freighter fleet in trying to meet world demand since the onset of Covid has been working very hard. Those 2,000 freighters are flying at 10% more than normal utilisation compared to last year.”