Dive Brief:
- Artificial intelligence hardware and semiconductor demand helped push global air cargo demand up 7% year over year in June, according to a July 3 report from Xeneta.
- Volumes tied to AI-related hardware, especially on the Asia Pacific to North America corridors, have been making up for the fall in e-commerce traffic, which has been air cargo’s main driver for the past two to three years, per Xeneta.
- “The scale of AI’s impact is easy to underestimate because it sits inside a small slice of total air cargo volume – below 10% of what flies,” Chief Airfreight Officer Niall van de Wouw said. “But the facts that confirm its role as the main driver of air cargo growth are undeniable.”
Dive Insight:
Rates from Northeast Asia and Southeast Asia to North America have seen major gains due to AI-driven demand, spiking 41% and 42%, respectively, in the final week of June compared with late February, Xeneta reported.
Taiwan, which manufactures a majority of the world’s advanced chips, reported GDP growth of 15% in Q1 2026 — the fastest quarterly expansion in almost five decades, per Xeneta.
Global semiconductor sales, meanwhile, doubled year over year to 106% in April, Xeneta reported. The surge, which is the strongest since the World Semiconductor Trade Statistics organization began keeping records in 1986, has made the Transpacific tradelane 2026’s strongest corridor.
Although every air freight growth engine eventually comes to a halt, air carriers should enjoy the AI boost while it lasts, van de Wouw said. In the meantime, demand shows little sign of slowing down in the short-term.
“Now we have AI, and no one knows how long it will last,” van de Wouw said. “The investment cycle in AI might take a hit and that could abruptly change the demand we are seeing and add risk, but there are no signs of the AI boost plateauing and pushing air freight demand downwards just yet.”
Although Transpacific spot rates have been on the rise, it's a different story on the Europe to North America lane, which was down 25% between late February and the first week of June, per Xeneta.
Van de Wouw emphasized that there is not a one-to-one correlation between rising fuel prices and rates. Instead, air freight rates follow supply and demand — not fuel. For instance, although jet fuel prices grew due to the Iran war, Transatlantic spot rates have been falling.
“We have recommended shippers have a different floating mechanism which is not dependent on jet fuel costs, but which is based on how much freight forwarders are actually paying to airlines,” van de Wouw said.
However, overall, spot rates have been easing as capacity is restored in the Middle East and tensions start to calm, Xeneta reported.
“What we were thinking at the start of the year was not that global air freight spot rates would be up +38% in June, but now we do see them starting to come down as we expected, albeit at a slower pace than they went up,” van de Wouw said.
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