Airfreight and Covid

 Airfreight in the UK is divided into 2 separate and distinct types. The 1st is aircraft totally given over to bringing in and taking out airfreight, and the two main airports in the UK for freighters are East Midlands (built at the top of the "Golden Triangle") and Stanstead (built at the right hand point of the triangle).

The Golden Triangle

Spanning from Northamptonshire up the M1 to East Midlands Airport, and West as far as Tamworth area, the Golden Triangle is busting with logistics names. As well as being in proximity to the huge distribution centres of supermarkets and high street stores, Midlands-based supply chain companies enjoy access to over 90% of the UK population within 4 hours drive. And with the building of the inland port nearby to EMA this will only grow the sector.

Golden Triangle Advantages

As well as the giants of UK haulage, smaller independent logistics companies are also numerous in this area; typically based in logistics centres. Proximity to major motorways, notably the M1 and M6, means that major cities such as London and Manchester are not difficult to reach from the Golden Triangle.

The other advantage of being based in the Midlands is that it’s not London! The capital city may be the epicentre for arts, finance and the legal profession; but it isn’t necessarily somewhere you’d chose as base for a logistical operation. Aside from being less accessible to the North and Scotland, London’s huge demand and scarcity of property means rental for a typical premises is much more expensive than in the heart of England.

There is no official precise measurement of exactly what constitutes the Golden Triangle, but it pretty much covers Leicestershire, Northamptonshire, Warwickshire, plus parts of Staffordshire and Derbyshire. Daventry International Rail Freight Terminal (DIRFT) contains 1 million square feet of Tesco warehousing space, and rivals Asda have several units less than 20 miles away in Magna Park.

It’s no surprise, therefore, that the Midlands has close to 150 million square feet of warehouse space: more than twice the combined warehousing activity of London, Scotland, and Wales.

Thanks David Green

You will see why this is important when the figures for the 8 months of 2020 are examined.

The 2nd is what is known as bellyhold (This is where long haul passenger aircraft offset the cost of freight carried in the hold with the price passengers pay for their seat). In previous years this meant that airfreight costs were up to 4X cheaper than if carried in a freighter aircraft and has been instrumental it the rise of Heathrow (and Gatwick to a lesser extent) because Heathrow has (up to 2019) carried 2/3rds of all the UK's airfreight.

Covid-19

With the collapse of passenger traffic in 2020 due to the rise of the Covid-19 pandemic it will be interesting to see just what affect the loss of bellyhold has had on the overall amount of freight carried in aircraft.

Firstly a starting point using Government figures and to put airfreight into perspective, by weight only 1/2 of 1% of all freight carried in the UK is carried by air.

Of that figure 2/3rds goes through Heathrow the biggest passenger terminal in the UK and 5% is carried in dedicated freighters leaving 95% as bellyhold and by far this is the most popular way of flying in airfreight.

So to the figures

What you can see from the CAA figures is total freight carried, from all UK reporting airports, is tonnage is down by 25% with Gatwick (-68%), Heathrow (-31%), Luton (-16%) and outside London Manchester is down by 55%.

Most notably these are bellyhold dependent airports whilst East Midlands (up 1%) and Stanstead (up 7%) have bucked the trend because they have (mainly) night services dealing with air freighters.

Looking at reasons for this drop one has to ask is the 25% reduction in airfreight due to lower numbers of passenger flights or due to the recession brought on by Covid.

The answer is most likely the recession as the % of freight carried at the London Centric airports has remained fairly stable. In 2009 this was 77.22%, in 2019 this was 76.36% and in the 8 months of 2020 it has been 73.77%.

The two airports that have benefitted have been East Midlands and Stanstead where the overall % of the airfreight carried has increased by 5% and 4% to 18% and 13% respectively.

Heathrow has seen its share drop by 4% to 58% and Gatwick has seen its share drop by half to just 1.85%.

Conclusion

The main driver for the 25% reduction in airfreight carried to UK airports in 2020 has not been the lack of passenger aircraft flying long haul rather it is the reduced demand for goods because of the worldwide recession. there has been a drift away from bellyhold but this has only meant a small increase in freighter only aircraft landing at EMA and Stanstead and as passenger numbers start to recover the cost of flying freight in the belly of passenger aircraft will mean the use of freighter only cargo will drop back to pre-covid levels due to the cost savings to be made.