Slicing and dicing the numbers
The alert reader may note that there was no mention made of IAG Cargo in the Freight 50 list on page 28. That was no oversight, for as far as IATA is concerned, IAG does not exist. IATA reports its data based on individual Air Operator Certificates, regardless of whether the airlines holdings those certificates are part of a single parent company, or part of an affiliated group. So, in the case of IAG, for example, there are only individual listings for British Airways and Iberia (which didn’t crack the top 50).
Another problem with creating these rankings is that with so many carriers interlining with each other and leasing space to express companies and charter brokers, confusion grows as to which companies wield the most power in the industry. The most glaring of these inconsistencies concerns DHL Express. A look at the chart on page 28 will show Polar Air Cargo carrying a respectable 513,000 tonnes of airfreight in 2014, placing Polar right in the middle of the Freight 50 list, at No. 26. But Polar is 49 percent owned by DHL Express, and almost all of its cargo is DHL traffic. Meanwhile, the word “DHL” appears on the chart only in the form of DHL Air, far below at No. 36.
To help address these problems, we have included a separate, modified Freight 50 chart. Through the assistance of Air Cargo World’s sister publication, Cargo Facts, we looked at the IATA data list through a different lens, measuring performance in freight tonne kilometers (FTKs), grouping some airlines by the parent companies to which they belong, and doing our best to show DHL in a more realistic way.
Regarding carrier groups, we show:
- Air France, KLM and Martinair under “Air France-KLM.”
- Cathay and Dragonair under “Cathay Pacific Group.”
- British Airways and Iberia under “IAG Group.”
- Lufthansa, Swiss, Austrian and Germanwings under “Lufthansa.”
- LAN and TAM, as “LATAM Group.”
But even on this adjusted list, there are many airlines still missing, as not all carriers report their year-end data to IATA. Most of these are probably too small to make the Freight 50, but others, such as China’s Yangtze River Express, would certainly make the list, either on their own, or, as in YRE’s case, by moving its parent company, Hainan Group, much higher in the rankings. Other cargo carriers missing from the list include Turkey-based MNG Airlines, China’s SF Express, Azerbaijan’s Silk Way, Sweden-based West Atlantic, and Ireland-based ASL group.
Regarding DHL, we have combined the traffic flown by DHL Air, DHL International, ABX Air, AeroLogic, Air Hong Kong, Polar Air Cargo and Southern Air, and show it in the chart as “DHL Express.” While this puts DHL Express in the upper echelon of the Freight 50, where it belongs, it is still far short of its actual airfreight total, said David Harris, editor of Cargo Facts.