Air cargo forecasting

This chapter discusses some of the factors and feature in air cargo traffic models: gross domestic product (GDP) as a proxy for economic activity; foreign trade volume or value, absolute amounts or growth rates; and freight rates or yields. It also includes exchange rates, quality of service and surface transport competition. Passenger terminal planning requires a busy hour measure to ensure that passengers are handled in the terminal at a specific level of service. The US Federal Aviation Administration publishes annual forecasts of passengers, cargo and aircraft movements for the purposes of planning its tower and en-route ATC facilities. It does this mainly by means of a simple econometric model based on GDP. The econometric models of Box 3 express air cargo freight tonne kilometres flows by region-pair in terms of the value of bidirectional region-pair airborne trade.