Watch: The State of Air Freight

Jenan Hassan, junior economist with Transportation Insight , discusses the findings from the firm’s latest Air Freight Tracker report. The latest intelligence from Ti Insight shows a “complex landscape” for the global air freight industry. Among the major challenges, Hassan says, is a tightening of capacity, due in part to delays in the delivery of new aircraft, especially freighters.

Backorders are high in the post-pandemic era, as carriers rush to replace their aging freighter fleets. Yet many of those existing aircraft are being kept in service beyond their ideal lifetime, due to the constriction of new supply. Freighters account for the lion’s share of air cargo worldwide, but shippers also rely heavily on belly space in passenger planes.



In the case of the latter, however, airlines prioritize passengers over freight, and capacity rises or falls in accordance with demand by travelers. Another major development that promises to have a big impact on the air freight industry is the reduction or elimination of the U.S.

de minimis allowance, granting duty-free status to imported packages with a value of less than $800. In anticipation of that change, importers have been frontloading orders and storing them in U.S.

warehouses, as opposed to shipping them direct from Chinese factories to consumers. An end to de minimis “will definitely be felt by those who depend on express air freight,” Hassan says. In addition, the prospect of high tariffs on goods from China is causing manufacturers to move operations to Vietnam and other countries that aren’t subject to the charges.

Nearshoring of production to the western hemisphere will also affect trans-Pacific air freight volumes, as suppliers shift supply in bulk closer to American consumer markets. The result will be an increase in the flow of goods through seaports, and decrease in air volumes. The air freight market remained stable in the first quarter of 2025, relative to last year, but the remainder of this year could see upwards pressure on rates as capacity tightens, Hassan says.

.