Sunday, October 25, 2026
The news that moves freight
Ocean Oct 25, 2026 · 6 min read

Airbus freighter forecast

Airbus says the world needs 2,670 more freighters by 2045, and most of them just replace old planes. Airbus forecast on 21 October that the freighter fleet will grow 46% to 3,460 aircraft by 2045. That takes 2,670 new freighters, but 1,580 of them only replace ageing ones. Our view: this is a forecast of tight capacity, not of plenty. Its own expert says the fleet is “a lot older” than ten years ago, and Airbus’s new A350F freighter doesn’t arrive until late 2027. In August, demand rose 4.4% while capacity fell 0.1% (IATA). Our call: Boeing’s forecast, due next week, will call for more freighters than Airbus does.

Airbus wants you to see 2,670 new freighters. Read it as a warning about old ones.

Airbus released its 20-year Global Market Forecast on Wednesday 21 October. The cargo headline: the world’s dedicated freighter fleet grows 46% by 2045, from 2,360 aircraft in 2026 to 3,460. Getting there takes 2,670 new freighters, 65 more than Airbus forecast a year ago, according to FreightWaves.

Our view is simple. This is not a story about a coming wave of capacity. It is a story about an ageing fleet that has to be replaced just to stand still, and about new aircraft that arrive late. For anyone buying air freight space, that points to tight capacity for years, not just during one peak season.

What Airbus actually said

The numbers break down like this, per AirDataNews and FreightWaves:

  • 2,670 new freighters are needed by 2045.
  • 1,700 of them will be conversions. A conversion is a passenger jet that has been stripped out and rebuilt to carry cargo. They are cheaper than new aircraft and usually older.
  • 970 will be factory-built freighters.
  • 1,580 replace existing freighters. Only 1,090 are for growth.
  • 1,140 are single-aisle (narrowbody) aircraft, the type often used in express and e-commerce networks. Another 860 are mid-size widebody and 670 are large widebody. Widebodies are the twin-aisle jets that fly long-haul main-deck cargo. Together they make up about 57% of demand.
  • North America needs 925 freighters, the largest regional total. Asia-Pacific needs 850.

Airbus also trimmed its traffic outlook. It now expects air cargo to grow 3.2% a year through 2045, down from 3.3% in last year’s forecast. That sits slightly above the 2.9% a year it expects for global trade. Asia is the fastest-growing region at about 4% a year. For context, FreightWaves reports that air cargo grew at a compound annual rate of 2.3% over the past 20 years.

So Airbus expects faster growth than the last two decades. Yet most of the aircraft it expects to be built are replacements. That combination is the point.

The fleet is old, and the new planes are late

Francois Cabaret, Airbus’s head of market forecasts, was direct about the age of the fleet. “On average, the fleet is a lot older than what it was just five or ten years ago,” he told FreightWaves. “And that’s why there is a very strong demand for replacement aircraft, whenever they become available.”

Note the last four words. “Whenever they become available” is the real constraint.

FreightWaves reports more than 2,350 freighters in service today. About 75 were retired in 2025, citing data from Cirium, an aviation analytics firm. The new-generation widebody freighters are not here yet. Airbus still targets late 2027 for the first delivery of its A350F, which has 115 orders from 14 named customers and one unidentified buyer. Boeing’s rival, the 777-8F, has 81 orders, per FreightWaves.

That leaves a gap of at least a year before the first A350F flies for a customer, and then several more years for production to ramp up. Until then, airlines have two choices: keep old aircraft flying longer, or wait for conversion slots. Neither adds much capacity quickly. Retiring an old freighter only makes sense when a replacement is ready, so the fleet grows slowly while it ages.

Our reading: when a forecaster’s own expert stresses replacement over growth, buyers of capacity should not expect relief from new metal any time soon.

Today’s market is already tight

The forecast lands in a market where demand is outrunning capacity. IATA’s August figures, released on 29 September, show:

  • Total demand, measured in cargo tonne-kilometres (CTKs, one tonne of cargo flown one kilometre), up 4.4% year on year.
  • Capacity down 0.1%.
  • The cargo load factor, the share of available space actually filled, at 46.0%, up 2.0 percentage points.
  • Asia–North America traffic up 13.2%, its seventh straight month of growth.
  • Europe–Asia up 3.1%.
  • Middle East–Asia down 11.0%, its sixth straight month of contraction.

“Air cargo demand rose 4.4% year-on-year in August with all regions reporting growth even as capacity was trimmed by 0.1%,” said Marie Owens Thomsen, IATA’s chief economist. She added: “Yields rose month-on-month for the first time since April, while global goods trade growth continues.” Yields are the revenue airlines earn per kilo flown, so rising yields mean shippers are paying more.

Fuel is part of that. IATA says jet fuel in August was 79.2% higher than a year earlier. Airlines with older, thirstier freighters feel that more, which adds another reason to replace them, and another cost passed on through fuel surcharges.

FreightWaves puts 2026 growth through August at 4.6% year on year, with North America up 5.9%. That is well above the 3.2% Airbus expects as a long-run average.

Middle East hubs are losing share

The sharpest regional shift is in the Middle East. FreightWaves reports Middle East volumes fell 6.5% through August because of the U.S. conflict with Iran. The share of connecting cargo (freight that changes planes at a hub on the way to somewhere else) moving through the Middle East fell to 31%, from 38% last year.

IATA’s August release says Gulf-linked corridors remained disrupted by the conflict. Middle East carriers posted the weakest regional demand growth, 1.0%, even as their capacity rose 3.3%.

Our view: a seven-point drop in share is more than a blip. Forwarders who built Asia–Europe air programmes around Gulf transit have spent months rerouting through other hubs or flying direct. Some of that will come back when the conflict eases. Some of it will not, because shippers who have tested new routings and found them reliable tend to keep them.

What this means for forwarders

Put the pieces together. The freighter fleet is old. New widebody freighters arrive from late 2027 at the earliest. Conversions will supply most new aircraft, and they take time and hangar slots. Demand is growing faster than capacity on the busiest lanes. Fuel costs are high.

For forwarders and shippers, our reading is:

  • Space on transpacific eastbound air stays scarce. Asia–North America is the fastest-growing lane in IATA’s data. North America also needs the most freighters in Airbus’s forecast. Expect carriers on that lane to keep pricing power through peak season.
  • Block space and capacity agreements matter more. When capacity is tight for years rather than weeks, fixed allocations bought ahead are worth more than spot market bets. Forwarders without them will pay up when volumes spike.
  • Fuel surcharges stay sticky. Older aircraft burn more fuel. As long as old freighters fill the gap, fuel will weigh more heavily on air rates.
  • Asia–Europe routings keep shifting. The Middle East’s lost share has to go somewhere. Watch direct services and alternative hubs, and price in longer or less predictable transit times on some routings.
  • Large widebody capacity is the pinch point. Big, heavy and outsized cargo needs main-deck widebody space. That segment depends most on new aircraft, which come last.

Airbus’s forecast is a long-range planning document, not a rate outlook. But its message on supply is clear, and it lines up with what IATA’s monthly data already shows.

What happens next

Boeing publishes its own forecast next week, according to FreightWaves. Last year Boeing projected 2,900 freighter additions, including 955 newbuilds, 67% fleet growth and 3.7% traffic growth a year.

Our prediction: Boeing’s forecast, due next week, will again call for more new freighters than Airbus’s 2,670 and traffic growth above Airbus’s 3.2% a year. We also expect IATA’s September figures, due around the end of October, to show Middle East–Asia traffic down for a seventh straight month. If both happen, forwarders should plan 2027 air capacity on the assumption that widebody space stays tight until the A350F and 777-8F are delivering in volume.

Sources