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For an industry that is often described as a bellwether of global economic health, any under-performance in the air cargo market rightly rattles nerves across all sectors and regions. African airlines fared worse than most in 2013, growing freight volumes by just 1% compared with 7.1% the previous year.
Tony Tyler, chief executive of IATA, the industry body representing most of the world’s large carriers, describes air cargo as the “biggest worry for the airline industry right now”. About $6.4 trillion of goods are transported by air each year, and although world trade is growing roughly in-line with economic expansion, exports have historically expanded at twice the rate of global GDP growth. As well as hurting airline’s bottom lines, analysts fear that this sluggishness could point to a slowdown in the global economic recovery...
