Continuing to catch up
Iata ranks leading cargo airlines post Covid-19. Iata’s member airlines improved their air cargo performance when measured in ftk by approximately 18.7% last year, compared to 2020. The improvement vis-à-vis the previous (pre-pandemic) year stood at 6.9%. Some airlines are still lagging behind, however.
The air cargo industry isn’t alone in its ongoing recovery from two quite exceptional years. In March 2020 most of the sector’s players managed to react quite quickly to the collapse in capacity that arose at the time on account of international air traffic closures.
The recovery later in the year was followed last year by an unprecedented and ongoing race to catch up – reflected very nicely by the green figures in the last column of the table on the right.
Not every provider has closed the hole again that appeared in 2020. Emirates SkyCargo for example, which completes the top four that remained unchanged in the period under observation, is still behind its airfreight performance of 2019.
For Turkish Airlines the gap is marginal, and its rapid rise up the ranks continues unchecked. The Istanbul-based airline, which calls itself Europe’s leading airline in the segment, is now sixth worldwide. Its goal now is to become the world’s No. 3 carrier by 2025.