Liege Airport has seen cargo tonnage grow year on year (YOY) by a substantial 13 per cent in the first half of the year as its freighter focused strategy pays off.
The airport says traffic is increasing on all major trade lanes to Asia, Africa and the Americas, but a few lanes have grown significantly. These include Turkey, where cargo grew by 50 per cent in the first six months of 2015, and cargo to and from the Americas is up a significant 75 per cent.
In the first six months of 2015, Liege Airport handled more than 300,000 tonnes. In the same period in 2014, Liege saw YOY growth of five per cent on 2013.
The airport says: “Reasons for this are the opening of additional scheduled freighter flights to/from Istanbul, Mexico, Los Angeles, Houston, Atlanta, Chicago and New York. Besides being connected to all continents and having a great trucking network all over Europe the main triggers for such growth figures are the tailored services for key product groups: live animals, perishables, pharmaceuticals, express and parcels and oversized project cargo.”
The airport says long term airline customers are showing nice growth of volumes along with carriers that joined in the last few years such as Qatar Airways, and Saudi Airlines Cargo. The airport adds taking into account an increase of freighter movements of 11 per cent and an improved load factor, Liege Airport and airlines showed “great performance on all parameters in the first half of 2015.”
Last year, Liege Airport handled 590,000 tonnes of cargo and is on track to handle more than 650,000 in 2015.
