Despite excellent airfreight growth last year, trade wars could dampen growth this year, warned International Air Transport Association (Iata) CEO and director general, Alexandre de Juniac.
“Headwinds are strengthening with growing friction among governments on trade. We still expect demand to grow, but those expectations are dampened with each new tariff introduced.
Experience tells us that trade wars, in the long run, only produce losers.” He said Iata still expected air cargo demand to grow by a modest 4.0% in 2018.
This is much lower than last year’s growth, with Monday’s release of the World Air Transport Statistics (WATS 2018) showing that in 2017 airfreight demand grew 13.7% over the 2016 figures.
Iata pointed out that the average freight load factor for 2017 was 49.6% with a total of 254 795 freight and mail tonne kilometres carried.
