Cargo
Asia–Europe freighter yields firm for a fourth month
Kite & Keel and two rivals are keeping night banks in the schedule even as passenger bellies refill. The cargo, they say, is paying to stay on its own aircraft.
Jonah Adler
Cargo correspondent
Hong Kong5 min
The night freighter out of the Pearl River delta is not supposed to be the healthy part of air cargo in a year when passenger bellies are back. Kite & Keel’s yield on the Asia–Europe leg has nevertheless risen, modestly, for a fourth straight month. The desk tape puts the benchmark at $2.41 a kilo, seven cents above August, on a mix that has shifted toward small electronics and temperature-controlled medical freight.
Passenger aircraft are carrying more of the ordinary parcels. What remains on the freighter is the freight that cannot miss a connection because a wide-body passenger jet went tech, and the freight whose contract names the aircraft type. Shippers of that second kind pay for the nose door and the schedule, not for the romance of night ramps.
“Belly space is a gift until it isn’t,” said Chris Adelayo, commercial chief at Kite & Keel. “A passenger airline will cancel a cargo-friendly timing because the people didn’t show. My customer has already paid not to be that story.”
The catch is the same engine shop delaying the passenger deliveries. Two of Kite & Keel’s converted freighters are due shop visits before Lunar New Year. Adelayo said the airline will wet-lease rather than drop the bank. Wet leases are how a firm yield becomes an ordinary one. For now, the bank is still on the board in the airline’s own metal.
