Air capacity is shifting away from weakening Asia markets and U.S. shippers and forwarders are starting to feel the impact.

Japan Airlines, one of the largest operators in trans-Pacific air trade, last week made the most startling move yet to pull planes out of the beleaguered market, announcing it is dropping its freighter service to New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport and scaling back its all-cargo fleet.

Click to Enlarge

"The airline is currently facing a tough environment, particularly in terms of its North American freighter business," JAL said in a statement. "Furthermore, the business outlook centering on North America remains gloomy."

JAL's pullback on the cusp of the trans-Pacific's peak air shipping season was the starkest sign this years that carriers are giving up on prospects for a recovery in demand this year, and perhaps even well into next year.

Freight traffic for Asia's airlines fell 6 percent in August as a sharp pullback in capacity triggered the sharpest decline in Asia air cargo business in nearly seven years. Asian carriers overall scaled back capacity a combined 7.1 percent in August compared to the same month a year ago, according to the Association of Asia-Pacific Airlines.

That marked the fifth straight month of declining cargo capacity and it helped give Asian carriers their third straight month of year-over-year declines in freight traffic.

The 6 percent slide in traffic in August was the deepest drop since the post-September 11 downturn in air cargo shipping in late 2001 and meant the AAPA's measure of Asian airline business this year was down 0.6 percent compared to the first eight months of last year.

The International Air Transport Association added to the grim reports with the news that a 2.7 percent drop in international air freight shipping in August was fed by a 6.8 percent decline year over year in Asia-Pacific traffic.

IATA's figures also showed capacity there was down 3.5 percent in August, an ominous sign since the pullback in aircraft comes when air carriers normally would be scaling up for the fall peak shipping season.

European air freight was down 0.9 percent while North America, where domestic U.S. carriers have put more capacity into international service, defied the trend with a 0.8 percent advance in August.

JAL is hardly the only carrier in Asia coping with weak demand, but in withdrawing from such a major market the carrier is offering a grim view of the future of trans-Pacific shipping in coming months.

Korean Air, the world's largest international freight airline, pulled back its capacity 4.5 percent in the second quarter and its traffic was off 3.8 percent. Korean said its United States trade fell 5 percent but that its yield has grown as space has tightened.

"The planned interim capacity reduction will spill some revenues and volume," the airline said in a financial report. "However, the improvement in yield (will) flow through (to) the bottom line."

JAL's international freight traffic fell 2.8 percent in the three months ending June 30 after falling in each of the last three fiscal years.

Besides dropping JFK from its all-cargo route map, JAL will cut its freighter flights between Tokyo and Los Angeles from six to five a week next year, retire two of its widebody freighters and cancel the passenger-to-freighter conversion of another 747-400 to get capacity better in line with reduced demand.

The No. 6 cargo airline based in Asia, JAL now will focus its trans-Pacific freighter service on Los Angeles and Chicago. The airline still has passenger flights going to the East Coast, and will use truck feeder services to get freight from New York and other points to its Chicago gateway.

It's a sharp blow to New York, where JFK saw its freight traffic fall 14.5 percent in July, the second straight double-digit decline in what is turning to be airport's worst year for cargo since 2001.

Kennedy's air freight traffic was off 5.5 percent in the first seven months of 2008 and the airport, the sixth-largest cargo airport in the world as recently as 2000, was ranked 16th in the world for freight tonnage in the first half of this year.