Airfreight volumes grew strongly year-on-year (YOY) by 6.2 per cent in October driven by the Asia Pacific region, according to market analyst WorldACD Market Data.

The analyst says the month was up on the five per cent YOY growth in September, while yields also saw improvement.

WorldACD says the “undisputed” driver in October was Asia Pacific, in particular China and Taiwan, with YOY volume growth of 12 per cent and 19 per cent, respectively.

This it notes was accompanied by a month-over-month (MOM) yield growth of 12 per cent and five per cent, respectively, while Korea saw a nine per cent yield increase.

The analyst also says South America saw yields improve MOM by 10 per cent and saw volume YOY growth of 3.6 per cent, while MESA and Africa held their own with volume growth in line with the worldwide average, though losing a little in MOM yields, while Europe and North America were “rather flat”.

In terms of volumes, European carriers performed best with a YOY increase of 6.4 per cent over the last three months, followed by airlines from Asia Pacific with 4.8 per cent, while two of the largest African carriers in its database saw double-digit growth.

US and European carriers also contributed most to the three per cent MOM growth in yields, a higher MOM growth for this month than in previous years.

WorldACD has also introduced a new measure – direct ton kilometres (DTK) – which multiplies weight with the shortest distance between origin and destination of shipments.

It says the October YOY growth was higher than the pure volume growth – 7.4 per cent versus 6.2 per cent, which was more in longer haul markets than short haul.

WorldACD says the measure was started as freight tonne kilometres (FTKs) are “insufficient to tell us what happens in terms of true market development: after all, a change in FTK’s combines market changes with purely operational routing changes”.