In the fourth quarter of 2023, international air freight ushered in a period of soaring demand and soaring freight prices, and European and American route freight prices once surpassed the level during the epidemic.

From the airline's psychological expectations，The airlines were very profitable in the fourth quarter of last year, based on the fourth quarter of last year，Airlines have generally had high expectations for this year, raising prices for 2024 contracts.

From the perspective of supply structure，At present, more than two-thirds of all domestic cargo airlines' cargo sources on international routes come from cross-border e-commerce packages，Cross-border e-commerce parcel goods have become the mainstream cargo type of domestic airlines，Several major e-commerce platforms have become the largest customers of all domestic freight carriers.At present, China has more than 10,000 tons of cross-border e-commerce packages need to be exported by air every day, these packages include SHEIN, TEMU, TIKTOK, Aliexpress, eBay, Amazon, Walmart, independent stations and export collection, etc., of which about 80% of the parcel cargo volume is the European and American way.

So, how many full cargo planes are needed to transport no less than 10,000 tons of e-commerce parcel air exports per day?

Taking continental routes in Europe and the United States as an example, long-range wide-body all-freighter aircraft such as B747 or B777 need to be matched to operate.

At present, there are about 60 long-range wide-body freighter aircraft in China, including China Eastern Airlines, Air China, China Southern Airlines, SF Express, Zhongzhou Airlines, Postal Airlines, Jinpeng Airlines, Hongyuan and so on.

Globally, as of December 2023, there are about 752 long-range wide-body full freighter aircraft worldwide, including DHL, UPS, FedEx, Atlas, Luxembourg Cargo Air, etc.

For example, an intercontinental cargo route in Europe and the United States flies 6 classes a week, each route needs 2 B747 or B777 long-range wide-body freighter to operate, according to the calculation of 100 tons of cargo loaded by each freighter, no less than 10,000 tons of export cross-border e-commerce packages per day need at least 200 long-range wide-body full freighter to transport.

There are about 752 long-range wide-body full-freighter aircraft in the world, and only China's cross-border e-commerce export package air demand requires more than 200 long-range wide-body full-freighter aircraft, which is equivalent to about 1/3 of the world's long-range wide-body full-freighter capacity needs to be put into the Chinese market.

So, in addition to all freighters, can we consider the belly capacity of passenger aircraft?

From the current domestic situation, the recovery of passenger aircraft belly capacity is less than expected. The number of foreign tourists coming to China has not fully returned to normal, the visa control of many overseas countries has not been fully relaxed, the recovery level of international passenger routes is about 30% of the pre-epidemic level, and it is difficult to significantly increase the belly capacity of international flights in the short term.

The e-commerce platform has the target of performance growth every year, and the volume of goods will increase in the future. At present, the rate of increase in cargo capacity is not keeping up with the growth rate of cargo volume on e-commerce platforms，Airlines to buy aircraft first need to wait for the order schedule, a freighter from order to production delivery normally takes about 2 years cycle, so the global freighter capacity supply in the short term can not be significantly increased.

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