Istanbul becomes Europe’s busiest cargo airport in H1

Istanbul Airport has become the busiest cargo airport in Europe after picking up extra volumes as a result of the Iran War.

Figures from Airports Council International (ACI) Europe show that the Turkish airport saw first half cargo volumes increase 10.8% year on year to just over 1m tonnes.

The increase comes as the airport has been one of the prime beneficiaries of cargo volumes diverting away from the Middle East hubs, instead transiting through alternative airports.

Indeed, the airport’s key carrier, Turkish Airlines, saw its own cargo volumes increase by 11.3%, while cargo revenues rose by 58% to nearly $1.3bn.

Meanwhile, Frankfurt Airport, which has in recent years been the busiest airport on the continent, slipped to second place as its volumes grew by the lower amount of 1.3% year on year to 980,731.

Airport operator Fraport said that performance had been affected by restrained economic growth in the Eurozone, a six-day strike in April at Lufthansa, and the grounding of Lufthansa Cargo’s Airbus A321 freighters.

Performance was also affected by the Iran war with more direct flying to Europe from Asia and Africa, while capacity to the Middle East was negatively impacted.

E-commerce growth continued to be a major growth driver at the German hub, although Fraport said some momentum was lost because of the European Union decision to introduce a charge for packages worth less than €150.

Paris CDG, which was last year Europe’s third largest cargo airport, has yet to publish its June figures.

In the first quarter, the French airport’s cargo volumes were actually up 6.8% year on year up on last year at 474,427 tonnes.

However, after a strong January and February, March and May figures both show a decline – of 3% and 1.3% respectively.

It is understood that the airport’s cargo figures came under pressure from March when the French government moved early with an e-commerce import charge of €2 per parcel, pushing cargo to other nearby airports.

In July, France replaced its €2 with the €3 that was implemented across Europe as a whole and evened the playing field.

The fastest-growing airports among the top 10 European cargo hubs included Leipzig, where volumes increased by 12.7% year on year to 745,278 tonnes and Amsterdam, which registered an increase of 10% to 757,049 tonnes.

The fast-growing Belgian hub of Liege, although not included in ACI Europe’s figures, also continued to grow, with the airport itself reporting a first-half volume increase of 11.3% compared with last year to 697,816 tonnes.

The airport said that one of the reasons for volumes increasing faster than the number of flights, was a rise in export cargo out of Europe, while efficiency gains also boosted performance

Volumes exported via Liege Airport increased by 19% compared to last year, compared to a 6% growth in imports, “reflecting the dynamism of European companies that use the airport as a logistics platform to global markets”.

The increase in exports was concentrated to Asia where volumes were up 17% and North America where there was a 51% improvement compared with a year earlier.