European airfreight hubs present strong contrasts in September
The overall rate of growth in the volume of air cargo handled at European airfreight hubs seems to have stabilised.
Having reported increases of 3% in July (see ITJ 37-38 / 2014, page 19) and 3.3% in August (see ITJ 43-44 / 2014, page 17), the continental airport association ACI Europe has now established growth of 3.2% for September, in comparison with the like-for-like period last year. Both of the region’s leading air cargo centres lost some throughput, however.
Whilst Frankfurt airport’s figures only slipped by a moderate amount, and did not threaten the most important German hub’s overall leadership, the volume at Paris Charles de Gaulle airport dropped by much more. The fall in volumes in the French capital’s main airport was partially due to a strike by Air France staff, which lasted for several days in the period under review. A strong improvement of 9.9% to 7,800 t at Paris Orly, the city’s second hub, stood in contrast with CDG’s figures. In the end the latter just managed to defend its second place in the rankings against Amsterdam, however, which is continuing to grow strongly.
All other leading air cargo airports registered throughput increases. Istanbul Atatürk once again developed particularly well, managing to overtake the hub in Cologne Bonn. The Belgian centres in Liège and Brussels also did well, with the latter overtaking last year’s tenth-ranked Milan Malpensa (+5.4% to 35,858 t).
Tel Aviv also reported a repeat of a strong performance (+18% to 22,784 t), as did Belgrade (+28%). But the absolute figure of 776 t shows that airfreight is not yet a substantial factor in the Serbian goods transportation mix. Russian airports again lost ground, with the capital Moscow (Sheremetyevo: –10.6% to 14,662 t; Domodedovo: –9.2% to 13,680 t) and the provincial hubs in St Petersburg: (–15% to 1,938 t) and Yekaterinburg (–16.5% to 1,836 t) all doing badly.