News that will be welcomed throughout the Air Freight industry comes from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) who have posted very encouraging growth projections for the sector. According to their annual market review and forecast, they anticipate that total air cargo traffic, which they measure in revenue tonne kilometers (RTKs), will grow by some 4.5 percent in 2016.
Perhaps even more exciting is their extended projection of stable growth for the coming twenty years with an average increase of 3.5 percent for that period. Rather than these figures being mostly incongruous they are built on the platform of the extended projections for (US) gross domestic product.
The FAA report also projects that a growing ratio of air freight will be transported via designated freight aircraft as opposed to that ratio which is transported on passenger flights over the period of the study. Currently about 7 out of 10 tonnes of air cargo is moved on freight aircraft with that figure expected to exceed 78 percent by the year 2036.
Finally, the study also forecasts that international air freight figures should rebound well in the years ahead following the current diminished figures which are dominated by an Asian market that is returning weaker than usual results.