Aircargo is the transportation of goods to and from the United Kingdom and is measured by tonnage transported and the number of air transport movements (ATMs) to carry said goods. Because of the cost of air transport compared to ships or HGVs it is normally reserved for valuable or time constrained goods. It can be 4-8X the cost of HGV or cargo ship transportation.
Also because of the much higher cost aircargo has been normally limited to a 1/2 of 1% of all other goods tonnage (figures from the Department of Transport DfT)
Between 2015 and 2018 the tonnage carried had been steadily increasing however most of of this increase was being carried in the hold of passenger planes and being landed at Heathrow which incidentally carries 2/3rds of all airfreight in the UK.
Year Passenger plane Freighter Total % of 2018
2015 1611432 687511 2299343
2016 1676594 707813 2384407
2017 1861759 760737 2622496
2018 1859178 772005 2631183
2019 1763776 771646 2535422 -3.64%
2020 766149 1236037 2002186 -23.91%
2021 820041 1447771 2297812 -12.67%
2022 1230059 939408 2169467 -17.55%
2023 projected 2108293 -19.87%
2019 the overall tonnage dropped, which was possibly caused by the Brexit affect, however a far bigger collapse occurred in 2020 and 2021 with covid lockdowns reducing passenger air transport and the massive reduction in bellyhold carriage and the slack being taken up by an increase in pure freighter ATMs. These pure freighter increases benefitted both East Midlands and Stanstead who both still have spare capacity for freighters. The issue however was overall aircargo reduces by 21% on 2019 figures but even more compared to 2018. (23.91%)
The other way to measure is ATMs and in comparison with the DfT forecasting currently up to 2019 Cargo ATMs were on target (60000 atms by 2030) and then came Covid and a massive drop in Bellyhold cargo with an increase in cargo freighters however far less tonnage was carried overall as seen above.
Table 06 Air Transport Movements
2015 56550
2016 51863
2017 52330
2018 54061
2019 57561
2020 83225
2021 92997
2022 66027
2023 projected 56757
As the figures show at the end of 2022 the pure freighter ATMs had started to revert back to 2019 levels however still not yet back on the path the DfT forecast back in 2017.
DfT forecast
Riveroak Strategic Partners have based their forecasting on Cargo only freighters which the DfT have forecasted to achieve around 60000 ATMs by 2030 currently the last "normal" year was 2019 which is slowly reverting back to the DfT forecast however, as can be seen by the tonnage figures is a declining method of transporting goods to and from the UK.
It is extremely unlikely that either UK freighter airport, Stanstead and East Midlands, will run out of capacity and currently Heathrow is still the largest cargo airport still with capacity it is difficult to see Manston taking much of the market share especially as all the other 3 have infrastructure to cope with cargo which Manston doesn't have.
This is Dr. Dixon's forecast from her original report
Clearly after just 7 years Dr. Dixon has forecast nearly 11000 ATMs that is 20% of the whole UK Cargo ATMs from a standing start without any current infrastructure in place. Most normal people might believe this is somewhat farfetched
