Dubai-based airline Emirates carried just over 2.6m tonnes in the 2017-18 financial year, a 1.8% increase over prior year, while sister company, ground handler dnata, registered an 8.4% rise in global volumes to around 3.1m tonnes.
The airline's airfreight division, Emirates SkyCargo, achieved revenues of AED12.4bn, an increase of 17% over the previous year: "This outstanding performance in a resurgent airfreight market enabled Emirates SkyCargo to contribute 14% to the airline’s total transport revenue," stated Emirates Group in its annual report
Emirates SkyCargo, the world’s largest international cargo airline measured by freight tonne kilometres flown (FTKMs), offers belly-hold cargo capacity on 255 passenger aircraft and 13 Boeing 777 freighters.
The annual report added: "2017/18 was a very good year for air cargo, the traditional bellwether for economies, and both Emirates SkyCargo and dnata airport operations reaped the fruits of investments into specialised products and facilities that expanded our capabilities, and enabled us to offer even better services to our customers.
"While expanding our business and growing revenues, we also tightened our cost discipline."
The report, covering April 2017 to March 2018 period, added: "On the cargo front, Emirates SkyCargo entered a strategic operational partnership with Cargolux to collaborate on freighter aircraft capacity, block space and interline, and connectivity between Dubai and Luxembourg.
"In October, the partnership was reinforced with the announcement of a code share agreement for cargo between the two carriers."
The freighter fleet flew to some 140 destinations on charter in the 2017-18 financial year and operated more than 362 charter flights.
Dnata’s UAE airport passenger and cargo operations revenues grew steadily by 4% to AED3.2bn in 2017-18, handling in excess of 731,000 tonnes of cargo at Dubai International (DXB) and Al Maktoum International (DWC).
The annual reported stated: "In line with a strong global pick-up for air cargo transport, we saw cargo volumes handled increase by 2% to 731,000 tonnes during 2017/18. Revenues from our cargo business increased by 6%."
On dnata's international performance, the report added: "In 2017/18, we focused on integrating the new businesses we acquired the previous year and on leveraging our global network to deliver strong growth. We handled 449,000 aircraft turnarounds, 2.4m tonnes of cargo, and saw strong revenue growth of 14% to AED3.8bn."
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