“Yields will likely decline in 2024 but they will still be above their 2019 levels,” noted Rachel Yuting Fan, senior economist at IATA Sustainability and Economics.
“Cargo revenue will also be about 11% above 2019 and comprise 12% of total industry revenue. In other words, 2024 will see sustained revenue growth and the sector outperform pre-pandemic levels,” she said.
The relevant economic markers are also positive with 3.5% growth in global trade projected for 2024. Broadly, belly capacity is back and will carry the majority of air cargo while freighters have disappeared entirely. Dedicated freighters will maintain their usual share of the market.
Other beneficial factors include the continued growth of e-commerce, the reduction in delivery times, and the robust performance of high-value specialised products, such as pharmaceuticals, which seem resilient to the industry’s usual volatility, IATA said.
Possible downsides, according to the association, include China’s supply chain and currency fluctuations.
Overall, cargo revenues are expected to fall to $111bn in 2024. Yields will remain high by historical standards, despite falling last year, and likely in 2024. Cargo volumes are expected to reach 61mn tonnes in 2024.
According to IATA, digitalisation and sustainability will continue to be critical to air cargo’s progress.
Digitalisation must overcome 50-year-old legacy systems and embrace a true data-sharing environment rather than just digitise paper documents.
The problem is the varied data in air cargo, which covers different functions, stakeholders, and formats. This makes any streamlining attempts extremely complex.
“ONE Record will help,” says Henk Mulder, IATA’s Head, Digital Cargo.
Explaining ‘ONE Record’, Mulder said: “It is an open standard that will connect the data and will be vital to digitalisation success. It has been tested and validated by over 200 companies for reliability and efficiency and all airlines must implement it by January 1, 2026.”
With ONE Record in place, there will be a unified approach to structuring air cargo data, which in turn will facilitate consistency in information exchange.
Importantly, this seamless data sharing will utilise advanced encryption and security protocols to protect sensitive information.
According to IATA, the implementation of Preloading Advance Cargo Information (PLACI) will also be a notable milestone. The objective is increased cargo security, but PLACI is a complex undertaking and governments are not harmonising their efforts.
Unaligned PLACI programmes make data sharing more difficult and run the risk of slowing down cargo flows.
Digitalisation will give air cargo not only the ability to serve e-commerce growth and smooth capacity fluctuations but also provide the analytics to boost sustainability, the association says.
Several elements of sustainability—aside from carbon emission reduction—are at play in air cargo, including eliminating single use plastics, lowering the loss of perishables, advocating for sustainable facilities and attracting and retaining young talent.
Air cargo will also continue to be a conduit for humanitarian aid, IATA said.
In 2023, the UN World Food Programme estimated that 362mn people were in need in humanitarian assistance globally. This was a record high, with basically one in 22 people in the globe requiring assistance.
Air cargo is pivotal to people receiving assistance where necessary. Since 2020, the EU Humanitarian Air Bridge has delivered more than 4,000 tons of aid.
And following the earthquake in Türkiye and Syria, some 29 key carriers delivered over 3,500 tons of aid from over 90 countries and provided transport for over 130,000 responders from across the world.
“The air cargo industry is in a better place than it was in 2019,” says Brendan Sullivan, IATA’s head (Cargo).
“We had an exceptional period during the pandemic. We became financially stronger, more efficient with advances in digitalisation, and were appreciated for the heroic efforts that we all made to keep cargo going during a very difficult crisis. Now, the challenges and opportunities that we face are familiar to us and we will work hard to make progress in every aspect,” Sullivan said.
