IATA is standing by its air cargo forecast, even if ocean shipping resumes through the Red Sea. The trade group expects air cargo volumes to grow by 6% in 2025.

Speaking to Air Cargo News at the IATA World Cargo Symposium (WCS), IATA director general Willie Walsh said that the trade body believes the air cargo industry can well withstand the return of ocean shipping to the Red Sea, even though the prospect of such a return does seem a long way off.

Walsh said there would not be a “significant” impact on air cargo. He explained that air cargo mostly serves time-sensitive or high-value goods. “What we tend to transport by air is critical in terms of time or critical in terms of value. And those goods tend to stick with air rather than move to transport by ship, so just-in-time products will invariably move by air.”

IATA predicted in December that air cargo volumes, measured in cargo tonne-kilometers (CTK), would rise by 5.8% year on year to reach 72.5m tonnes in 2025, supported by e-commerce and Red Sea-related demand.

Any shift from air back to sea “is very marginal”, according to Walsh. In fact, volumes are less significant than yields in the scenario that disrupted ocean freight goods shifts to airfreight because it has become time critical.

“What we typically see is rather than the volumes, (sea to air) drives the yields because pricing will tend to go up because the supply of options for moving cargo gets reduced when you get this disruption by sea.”

Source: Air Cargo News