Air France –KLM Cargo (AF-KL Cargo) flew 709 million revenue tonne-km in April this year, up by 0.9% on the same month of 2015.
And, with capacity down by 2% year on year to reach just less than 1.2 billion available tonne-km, the load factor rose by 1.7 percentage points to reach 60.9%.
The figures for the first four months of this year are less appealing. Cargo traffic fell by 7.5% year on year, while capacity was down by 6.6%.
As a result, the average load factor over the January – April period was down by 0.6 percentage points year on year to 59.7%.
It’s been a tough market in which to operate, and AF-KL has worked hard to bring capacity into line with cargo demand.
Over time, it is withdrawing significant amounts of freighter capacity, although the introduction of new ‘freight-friendly’ wide-bodied passenger aircraft such as B777s will compensate in large part with their extensive bellyhold capacities.
