Global air cargo demand continued to decrease in March, reports IATA

Air cargo, worldwide, continued to decline in March, in year-on-year terms, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) has reported. (IATA is the global representative body for the airline sector.) The declining trend actually began in March last year. year-on-year, global air cargo demand was down 7.7%, while international air cargo traffic fell by 8.1%. Compared to demand before the Covid-19 pandemic, air cargo traffic in March this year registered a decrease of (also) 8.1%. Yet the March 2023 year-on-year decline in global traffic was an improvement over the figure for February (down 9.4%) and significantly better than the figures for January (a drop of 16.8%) and December 2022 (a fall of 15.6%). IATA noted that it was currently unclear if this signalled the beginning of an improving trend or merely reflected a temporary upside in a volatile market.