Frankfurt Cargo Hits Record High in May

Frankfurt airport's cargo traffic hit an all time high in May after climbing nearly 40 percent from a year ago, driven by soaring shipments from Asia.

Europe's biggest cargo hub handled 204,332 metric tons of freight last month compared with 146,259 metric tons in May 2009.

This beat the record volume of 203,308 metric tons set in March when the airport's cargo traffic broke through the 200,000 metric tons barrier for the first time.

European Airlines' Freight Traffic: By the Numbers

The previous peak was in November 2007 when traffic totaled 191,908 metric tons.

"The high growth rates in air freight tonnage result especially from Asia's dynamic economic activity and from air freight's special forte of making available at short notice the capacities required by industry and trade," said Stefan Schulte, chairman of Fraport AG, owner of Frankfurt airport.

Cargo traffic for the first five months of the year reached 895,022 metric tons, an increase of 32.7 percent on the same period in 2009.

Fraport said Frankfurt's air freight was "nearly unaffected" by a five day shutdown of the airport in April when a plume of ash from an erupting Icelandic volcano blanketed northern Europe.

The Fraport group's five airports -- Antalya, Turkey; Burgas and Varna, Bulgaria; Lima, Peru, and Frankfurt -- boosted cargo traffic by 39.2 percent year-on-year in May to 230,064 metric tons.

-- Contact Bruce Barnard at brucebarnard47@hotmail.com.