Middle East air carriers record 15.3% growth in international freight traffic

Seasonally adjusted volumes in the region maintain a steady upward trend, while the drop in international capacity was 17.5%.

According to IATA, global demand for air cargo in April grew by 12% compared to the pre-crisis level and the sector's profitability remains stable. At the same time, adjusted for seasonality, demand is now 5% higher than the pre-crisis peak in August 2018. At the same time, some regions are ahead of the global trend. These include operators in the Middle East, Africa and North America.

ZetAvia also saw an increase in demand and volumes during April. The ZetAvia fleet consists of IL-76 cargo aircraft, which perform charter flights to the countries of the Middle East, Europe and Africa.

The Association also notes that a number of factors influenced the global air cargo performance in April. This is a 4.2% increase in world trade in March, an increase in competitiveness compared to maritime shipping, a stabilization of tariffs after a peak in April 2020, as well as high tariffs on sea containers. During this period, throughput remained 9.7% below pre-COVID-19 levels due to continued downtime for passenger aircraft. At the same time, carriers continued to increase the use of cargo aircraft to compensate for the lack of available cargo compartments. As a result, the international cargo capacity of cargo ships increased by 26.2% in April, while the carrying capacity of cargo holds fell by 38.5%.

As an aviation expert, I would like to note that the speed of air cargo transportation is a clear advantage due to the restoration of part of the time lost during the long process of delivery by sea containers and land transport.

High rates of air cargo transportation, IATA specifies, are not universal. For example, recovery for carriers in the Latin American region stalled in April. Other aviation markets saw volume increases in April 2021.

Oleg Sergeev