Worldwide air cargo tonnages have increased in the last week of August. This follows three consecutive weeks of declines since the beginning of August, the latest figures from WorldACD Market Data reveal. A similar pattern as last year in August, although this year the decline has been stronger.

Looking at week 34 (August 22-28), worldwide chargeable weight increased 4% compared with the previous week, and the average worldwide rate also increased, based on the more than 350,000 weekly transactions covered by WorldACD’s data.

Read more: Flown tonnage drops further in August

When comparing the last two weeks with the preceding two weeks (2Wo2W), the trends are still negative, with a decline of the average worldwide rates at 1% and a chargeable weight decrease of 3%, in a stable capacity environment.

Volumes slowly picking up
While capacity remained broadly stable across that two-week period, tonnages seemed to slowly recover from most of the air freight origin regions. Notably, volumes from Africa increased 6%, while Europe outbound volumes dropped 8%, on a 2Wo2W basis.

Read more: Global air cargo tonnage and prices continue decline

Those volume trends were also reflected on a lane-by-lane basis, with Africa to Europe increasing 7%, while significant declines in volumes were recorded from Europe to Central & South America (-12%) and Asia Pacific (-11%), on a 2Wo2W basis.

Year-on-Year perspective
Taking a longer-term perspective for the overall global market, the last two weeks showed a drop in chargeable weight of 10% compared with last year (YoY), despite a capacity increase of 9% (though not from Asia Pacific), while rates increased 4%.