XXIV. IMPORTANCIA DEL TRANSPORTE DE LA CARGA AÉREA DURANTE LA PANDEMIA EN COLOMBIA

Abstract

Air cargo is one of the elements that has generated a relevance in the transportation
of goods worldwide as it evidences the speed of air transport in the delivery of documents,
goods and other items. Currently, each country has airports where air cargo and mail
transportation has become a relevant factor of competitiveness, based on speed, easy access,
no physical barriers and usefulness for perishable products or urgent shipments. According
to the Airports Council International - ACI, the Memphis airport in the United States became
the world's leading cargo airport in 2020 by registering a total cargo traffic of 4,613,431 tons
during the year in question. It was followed by Hong Kong airport, which moved about
4,468,089 tons. Another Asian airport, this time the one in Shanghai, ranked third with the
movement of 3,686,627 tons. (Statista, 2022), as for Latin America, according to the statistics
of the ( (World Bank, 2022) regarding air cargo transport (million ton-kilometers) in 2020,
Colombia led the movement of goods with 1,496,604 tons, in second place, Chile with
1,458,396 tons and in third place Brazil with the movement of 1,209. 707 tons of cargo,
which is much more relevant for Colombia compared to other developed countries. Colombia
depends heavily on air transport for cargo transportation, as it suffers from the lack of rail,
port and land infrastructure, This dependence increased in the development of the COVID
19 pandemic since it became one of the main actors not only for the big companies but also
for the people that from their homes and a change in their new normality found that the
purchases they made on the Internet and that arrived on time to their homes was largely
thanks to air transportation.
This research aims to analyze the importance of air cargo transportation in Colombia
during the pandemic that had a variation comparing 2020 with 2019 of -33.5% nationally and
-10.3% in international cargo according to the operational statistics of the Civil Aeronautics.