Brussels Airport Sep cargo volumes up 19%; imports from Africa surge

October 16, 2020: For the fourth consecutive month, Brussels Airport has registered an increase in volumes transported, up 18.9 percent compared with September 2019, thus outperforming global and European air freight growth. Regionwise, import goods from Africa witnessed a surge while exports to Asia saw decent growth.

The main cause of the overall negative growth is still the halt in wide-body passenger flights, which severely limits capacity, with freight on passenger aircraft carrying 50 percent of the freight transported worldwide.

Express services is maintaining its growth compared with last year (+33.8 percent), while the increase in volumes in the full cargo sector (+88.8 percent) is accelerating the growth in air freight volumes. This compensates for the limited volumes on passenger flights.

The number of full cargo flights in September is well above the 2019 level, with a slight increase compared to the previous month. The number of additional flights by passenger aircraft used for freight-only flights remains constant. This does not, therefore, lead to an increase in night flights.

Freight transported by lorry is down again (-14.1 percent), yet the total volume of goods handled by the Brucargo logistics platform is still increasing, with a total increase of 11.4 percent to 56,748 tonnes.

The total number of flight movements decreased by 66.8 percent in September 2020 compared to September 2019, to 7,141 compared to 21,533 in September 2019. The number of passenger flights decreased by 76.5 percent, while the number of cargo flights increased by 39.9 percent.