Ukraine International Airlines (UIA) transported 4,828,919 kilograms of cargo and mail in the period of January-June 2020, which is 50.8% less than the 9,816,662 kilograms it transported in the corresponding period of January-June 2019.
UIA’s Vice President for Commercial Operations Serhii Fomenko announced this in an interview with the CFTS portal.
According to Fomenko, falls in cargo transportation volumes were already a trend in the global aviation market before the start of the coronavirus pandemic and the grounding of airlines’ aircraft fleets around the world during the period of restrictions on passenger flights only intensified this trend.
"The dynamics were already negative at the beginning of the year. The trend was generally negative due to US-China trade relations. All the airlines in the world talked about the reductions of cargo transportation volumes. However, these reductions were actually small at the height of the epidemic. It just happened that a lot of attention was paid to it. About 200 planes are a drop in the ocean compared with the tens of thousands of planes that were flying before the quarantine," Fomenko said.
In addition, Fomenko said that UIA transported 1,006,000 kilograms of cargo during the quarantine period, when transportation of cargo in the cabins of passenger aircraft was in demand. In total, the company performed 24 such flights.
SkyUp Airlines recently announced that it transported 1,096 tons of cargo on 111 flights in the period of April-May 2020.
