IATA: August air freight up 4.7%

IATA: August air freight up 4.7%    Geneva-based International Air Transport Association reported that international air freight traffic rose 4.7 percent in August.
   Middle Eastern carriers lead the monthly growth with a 13.1 percent year-on-year increase in freight-ton kilometers, followed by Africa (10.6 percent), Asia Pacific (4.9 percent), North America (4.6 percent), Europe (2.6 percent) and Latin America (1.1 percent).
   August’s increase brought the average growth in worldwide traffic after eight months to 5.2 percent.
   “A strong revenue environment and careful capacity management are keeping load factors at record levels. Combine that with a declining oil price and enormous efficiency gains and the industry may end the year better off than our current $1.7 billion loss projection,” said Giovanni Bisignani, IATA’s director general and chief executive officer. “More importantly, we are on track for a profit of $1.9 billion in 2007 — the first black number in six years.
   “While the U.K. terror alert had no clear impact on traffic growth last month, it did send some strong wakeup calls to the industry. We need better contingency planning at airports, greater harmonization of security measures across borders and governments must take up the security cost burden.”