Air cargo: growth accelerates in May

Global demand for air cargo increased by 6.0% year-on-year in May 2026, driven by Asia and North America. Cargo rates are trending upwards, which has led IATA to revise its 2026 forecasts upwards. The overall revenue for the cargo business of the world’s airlines is now expected to reach $162 billion.

1/ Supply and demand

* CTK: cargo tonne-kilometres - Data source: IATA.

• Demand

Global demand for air cargo, expressed in cargo tonne-kilometres, saw a year-on-year growth of 6.0% in May 2026, building on the positive trajectory of April (+4%). On international routes alone, the increase even reached 6.5%.

The conflict in the Persian Gulf continues to penalise Middle Eastern companies, which showed a further decline of 8.9% year-on-year, although much less than in March (-54.2%) and April (-18.2%). The growth in May primarily benefited North American and Asian airlines,"which together generated more than 1.2 billion additional CTKs", notes the International Air Transport Association (IATA). European airlines also made a respectable contribution to traffic growth. As for African companies, they hold the record for percentage growth, but on a significantly smaller basis in terms of volume.

• Supply

Another notable event in May was that capacity returned to growth after two months of decline attributable to the Middle East conflict. Overall, supply increased by 1.9%, and by 2.8% on international routes, notably thanks to a significant increase in capacity from Asian and North American companies.

Capacity growth is lower than traffic growth, which allowed for an improvement in the load factor, which stood at 46.3% in May (52.4% on international routes).

• Annual total

Despite disruptions related to the Middle East conflict, the air cargo market remained in year-on-year growth at the end of May, with a 4.1% increase in volumes (+4.4% internationally).

* CTK: cargo tonne-kilometres - Data source: IATA.

2/ Evolution by corridor

• Asia-North America: demand growth on this major route has accelerated sharply. "It reached the highest pace among major corridors, highlighting the persisting importance of trans-Pacific manufacturing and ecommerce flows", IATA points out.
• Europe-Asia: the growth observed over the past several months on this route is continuing, though with a deceleration occurring after exceptionally high levels of progress.
• Intra-Asia: the dynamics remained very favourable on this corridor, supported by the development of genuine regional production networks and integration into global supply chains.
• Middle East: The conflict in the Middle East affected the corridors involving this region. Traffic between Europe and the Middle East, as well as between the Middle East and Asia, contracted, as network disruptions hampered flows through major hubs.

3/ Price trends

Disruptions in the Middle East continue to have an inflationary effect on air cargo rates. Average unit revenue increased by 0.3% compared to the previous month and by 37.9% year-on-year, reaching $3.25/kg.

Source: Upply

This development reflects, firstly in part, tensions over fuel supply. Certainly, year-on-year, the price of kerosene has decreased by 16.3%, but it remains 93.5% above 2025 levels and above all, the supply of kerosene has remained limited, due to production disruptions in refineries.

But above all, demand for air transport has increased at a much greater rate than supply, which has put airlines in a favourable position to negotiate higher fares.

WorldACD data for June shows that cargo rates remain at a high level, despite an increase in capacity. Even when supply growth exceeded demand growth, the spot market held up, revealing a certain nervousness in the market. "For rates to drop back significantly towards pre-war levels will presumably require the current truce between the US and Iran to be maintained sufficiently to enable some genuine longer-lasting stability to return to both air cargo and airline passenger markets", says WorldACD.

4/ Trends and outlook

The outlook for the air cargo industry in 2026 is proving better than expected. The fundamentals remain quite solid. The global manufacturing PMI reached 53.5 in May 2026, registering one of the highest levels in recent years even though the increase is modest month-on-month (+0.1 point). The evolution of the index of new export orders has put a damper on the optimism though, since it remained below the expansion threshold for the second consecutive month, at 49.6 in May. However, despite this overall context, air cargo is holding its own, driven in particular by the dynamism of demand from Asia and by specific sectors experiencing strong growth such as e-commerce.

IATA has also significantly revised its financial forecasts for airline cargo activity in 2026 upwards. In its June projections, it forecasted cargo revenue of $162 billion, up 7.3% compared to 2025, whereas it only predicted 1.9% growth last December.

• This growth is directly linked to the rise in prices: while it anticipated a decline of 0.5% in the average unit revenue, IATA is now forecasting an increase of 6.5%, to 56.8 USD cts per tonne-kilometre transported.

• Traffic growth, however, is expected to remain moderate. IATA announced a year-on-year increase of 0.2%, with a total of 71.7 million tonnes. Demand for air cargo, expressed in tonne-kilometres transported, is expected to grow by 0.7%, to 285.1 billion. This figure is significantly lower than the 2.6% growth announced in December.