Air cargo to climb into mid-2022 amid shipping delays, DHL says

Shipping bottlenecks and spending by stuck-at-home consumers will help drive increased demand for air cargo until mid-2022. And with thousands of passenger planes, which usually carry about half of global air freight, still grounded, capacity constraints will continue to push up prices, according to Tim Scharwath, the chief executive officer of DHL Global Forwarding, Freight. “People are very willing to spend, they have more money left because they didn’t go on holiday,” Scharwath said. Air cargo capacity “will also be scarce into 2022” because slow vaccine rollouts in Asia will dissuade people from traveling, he said. Airfreight rates to North America from Hong Kong have risen as much as 24% this year after more than doubling in 2020, as the Covid-19 pandemic increased demand for electronics goods like gaming consoles and laptop computers as more people were forced to work from home. The cargo market has been a rare bright spot for Asian carriers such as Singapore Airlines and Korean Air Lines, whose businesses have been decimated by the pandemic.<br/>