Air cargo is expected to remain resilient in 2026, even as global trade growth slows, with the International Air Transport Association (IATA) projecting traffic to rise 2.6% on the back of AI‑driven investment, rising demand for high‑value, time‑sensitive goods, and the continued shift toward ecommerce.
Global trade growth is expected to slow sharply in 2026, with the World Trade Organization projecting trade volume growth of just 0.5%, down from 2.4% in 2025.
Against this backdrop, IATA revised its outlook for air cargo in 2025, now expecting 3.1% year‑over‑year growth, despite earlier forecasts of marginal growth or 0.7% expansion in its June outlook, due to trade tensions and ‘de minimis’ rule changes. Demand softened mid‑year, but recent months — including October 2025, which recorded 4.1% growth — show strong rebounds, led by electronics, pharmaceuticals, and ecommerce. Asia‑Pacific carriers are driving much of the recovery, though U.S. tariff pressures remain a challenge.
Julia Seiermann, head of industry analysis at IATA outlined the organization’s latest growth outlook for air cargo in 2026. “Air cargo will grow 3.1% in 2025 and 2.6% in 2026. It will experience more growth than world trade thanks to investment in the sector and demand for high-value goods,” Seiermann told a recent press briefing.
In its December report, “Global Outlook: Trade, AI, and the Energy Transition,” IATA noted that air cargo has once again shown its “unique stabilizing role” in the global economy, “helping to blunt the impact of the 2025 tariff cycle much as it softened the blow of the COVID pandemic.” Global air cargo demand, measured in cargo tonne‑kilometers (CTK), rose 3.3% year‑on‑year as of October.
“Global trade has been surprisingly resilient, despite the volatile trade policy environment. Air cargo came to everybody’s rescue as a critical enabler of rapid adaptation, ensuring that goods arrived ahead of announced tariff deadlines and facilitating the swift rerouting of China’s exports to alternative markets,” IATA said.
“While trade growth may slow in 2026, air cargo is well-positioned to remain robust, benefiting from AI-driven investment, growing demand for high-value, time-sensitive goods, and the structural shift toward ecommerce,” it added, noting that in times of uncertainty, when speed matters most, “air freight remains the preferred option.”
Asia‑Pacific cargo traffic is projected to increase 8.5% year‑on‑year in 2025. Year‑to‑date data through October indicates broad growth across most routes, with the Europe corridor up 10.6%. IATA said Chinese exporters adjusted to U.S. tariffs by redirecting shipments to other trading partners and using measures such as intermediate stops or relocating production outside tariff‑affected countries.
“While this substitution effect materialized quickly, it might not be sustainable if future tariffs target rerouting practices. The low pricing that supported inventory reductions might not persist, reinforcing our more cautious outlook for 2026,” the global trade association for airlines, representing more than 80% of worldwide air traffic, said.
Air cargo volumes are expected to reach 71.6 million tonnes in 2026.
Marie Owens Thomsen, SVP of sustainability and chief economist at IATA, told the press briefing that air cargo’s performance stands out as it defied expectations of decline amid the rising use of tariff in trade policy.
“We anticipated a much worse outcome, but people anticipated [the tariffs] and were buying as much as they could before the tariffs took place. China did a rapid redirection,” Thomsen said, noting that “air cargo totally came to the rescue.”
She added that between January and August 2025, Chinese exporters shifted trade away from the United States and toward other countries — especially India, Thailand, Hong Kong, Vietnam, and the EU, due to new tariffs and exports to other countries rose, as Chinese companies found alternative markets.
China’s exports rose from US$2.3 trillion in the January to August months of 2024 to US$ 2.45 trillion in the same period in 2025. Exports to the U.S. fell by US$52 billion on the same basis but were more than offset by the increase of US$186 billion in exports to other countries.
IATA’s separate report noted that the volatile trade-policy environment has turned out to be less detrimental to the global economy than what was feared earlier this year. “However, 2025 would undoubtedly have been a much more stellar year in terms of economic performance had the previous trade policies remained in place.”
It noted that the “slow, intermittent and partial implementation of protectionist trade policies” is behind the “resilience in global trade growth.”
“The aggressive frontloading in the first and second quarters (Q1 and Q2) provided a major boost to economic activity with notably U.S. imports soaring ahead of tariff hikes, driving much of this year’s positive surprise,” IATA said, adding that air cargo was a “key enabler” in the front loading as shipments needed to arrive ahead of a deadline.
Meanwhile, the value of trade transported by air rose by 25% year-on-year from January to August 2025, based on data from 47 countries covering 39% of global trade. In contrast, overall trade grew 7%, with sea freight up less than 1%. March marked the peak in frontloading, with air shipments jumping 43% that month. Merchandise trade is now expected to grow 2.4% in 2025, down from 2.8% in 2024, but well above earlier forecasts near zero.
“However, this pace of growth in trade is unlikely to be repeated in 2026 as the one-off impact of frontloading fades, and the decelerating global business cycle, coupled with higher inventory levels, will likely limit trade growth to less than 1% next year,” IATA said.
At the press briefing, Seiermann said this year’s trade held up better than expected due to front‑loading, lower‑than‑announced U.S. tariffs, strong demand for AI‑related goods and exporters finding alternative markets.
“A few months ago, we still all thought that things would be really bad this year in 2025. However, the decline was in the end not as sharp as we expected, and we still saw some kind of growth because front-loading actually boosted activity early in the year. The U.S. tariffs ended up being lower than initially announced,” she said. “As a result, this year was not too bad; however, the negative effect of tariffs has not disappeared, it is just a bit delayed, and we are now expecting quite slow growth next year.”
Seiermann said aircraft availability remained one of the most significant constraints for industry growth in 2025.
“What we can see is that the order backlog now exceeded 17,000 aircraft, which corresponds to nearly 60% of the fleet and which is about 11 times annual deliveries,” she said.
“What this means is that even under the expectation that production and deliveries will accelerate in 2026, which is now, the view of analysts, normalization is still unlikely to occur before the early 2030s or even the mid-2030s.”
IATA said in its latest financial outlook that airlines worldwide are expected to post a net profit of US$39.5 billion this year and US$41 billion in 2026, describing it a “stabilization of profitability even as supply chain issues persist.”
While this would set a new record, IATA noted that the net profit margin is expected to be unchanged from 2025 at 3.9%.
“Airlines are expected to generate a 3.9% net margin and a US$41 billion profit in 2026. That’s extremely welcome news considering the headwinds that the industry faces—rising costs from bottlenecks in the aerospace supply chain, geopolitical conflict, sluggish global trade, and growing regulatory burdens among them,” said Willie Walsh, director general of IATA.
He noted that air cargo’s performance is of particular interest as it has defied many predictions of gloom to hold its own amid rapidly changing trading conditions.
“The resilience in air cargo has been particularly impressive. As trade flows adapt to a protectionist U.S. tariff regime, air cargo has been the hero of global trade buoyed in part by robust ecommerce and semiconductor shipments to support the boom in AI investments.”
“Notably, air cargo enabled front-loading to deliver products ahead of tariff deadlines, and it flexibly accommodated demand surges as tariffed goods normally destined for the U.S. found new markets,” Walsh said. “The critical role of air cargo is front and center as the global economy adjusts to new realities.”
By Charlee C. Delavin
Asia Cargo News | Hong Kong
