2022年10月17日

Shah指出了航空貨運行業專業人士應該注意的四個因素:2023年的需求、對貨機的需求、運力回歸以及收益率將如何反應。X koo Flexport在其2022年10月13日的“物流重組:航空市場更新”網絡研討會上指出，由於貨機利用率下降、全球經濟需求減弱以及關注可持續性，他們預計航空公司將加快老舊飛機的淘汰。Flexport航空貨運戰略和承運人發展副總裁尼爾·瓊斯·沙阿主持了此次展會，他表示，航空公司將開始加速退役，淘汰老舊飛機，同時談到他們將如何應對需求下降和產量惡化的環境。“十有八九，這很可能發生。這對他們來說是一件非常容易的事情，是一個非常好的和有效的短期規劃角色。”另一個反映同樣情況的指標是貨輪利用率，該指標已回落至2019年的水平。“請記住，2019年對航空公司來說是非常艱難的一年。我們現在的貨輪利用率回落到與2019年非常相似的水平。窄體飛機的利用率已經低於2019年的水平。這在一定程度上是因為我們看到過去兩年有大量窄體貨輪湧入市場。 If these rates fall much further, airlines are going to be forced to retire aircraft," he said. To put this into context, freighter capacity has been increasing at its highest rate in the last twenty years because belly capacity disappeared during the pandemic, which used to represent 50 percent of global capacity. Freighters had to fill this void and it had a growth of six percent in the last two years. "What is more significant is that over the past year we had all the Russian-operated aircraft permanently removed from the market which is why we had flat growth from 2021 to 2022," added. He also noted that airlines had record-low aircraft retirements in the last two years. "There are 500 aircraft above the age of 30, that's a record number and we never had that high number," he said. He also noted that a lot of the cargo aircraft is fuel inefficient, with four engines and emitting lots of carbon while for many customers of airlines sustainability is becoming more important. He said, "They need to partner with people who have a similar vision when it comes to sustainability and airlines know this and they want to be carbon neutral by 2050." "To do this, they have to think about the role of sustainable aviation fuels, retiring older aircraft, replacing them with much more fuel efficient, newer aircraft," he added. Before this he had also pointed out the conflicting headlines making rounds in the air freight market in terms of increased demand for freighters on one side with Air Canada Cargo, Lufthansa and Air China expanding their freighter fleet and shipping lines like MSC and CMA CGM entering the freighter operations. While on the other side there are severe market headwinds that may affect the demand. While analysing the demand side, he concluded the economy news headlines as, "The worst is yet to come, and for many people, 2023 will feel like a recession." He was citing the IMF's (International Monetary Fund) reduction in global growth rate to 2.7 percent compared to projected 3.2 percent this year and the merchandise GDP cut to 1 percent for 2023 from a previous forecast of 3.4 percent. So the next question would be where the airfreight industry would go in 2023. In other words, will there be an over or under capacity, what will be the load factor moving forward and how the yields turn out to be? To answer this key question, Shah pointed out four factors that air cargo industry professional should pay attention to which includes how demand will develop in 2023, whether will there be a continued appetite for freighters, how quickly will belly capacity return to pre-Covid-19 levels and how will yields react. Tags: