Wednesday, November 11, 2026
The news that moves freight
Air Nov 11, 2026 · 7 min read

Air rates keep climbing as capacity, not demand, sets the price

Tracker Air cargo rates · 3.93 USD/kg

Less room in the hold, more per kilo: missing space is now writing the air cargo rate card

Air cargo from China and Hong Kong to Europe fell 17% in October compared with a year earlier. Over the same month, the price of flying it rose 9% on September and 14% on the year, to $4.85 a kilo. Those figures come from WorldACD, the air cargo data firm, which published its October and week 44 numbers on 9 November.

Across the whole market, the picture is the same in milder form. Worldwide tonnage grew 6% on the year in October. Spot rates rose 37%, to an average of $3.67 a kilo. (A spot rate is the price for a one-off booking, as opposed to a contract rate agreed in advance.) In week 44, 26 October to 1 November, spot rates climbed again, up 4% in a week to $3.93 a kilo. That is 40% higher than a year before, on tonnage just 2% higher.

Our view: this is not a demand boom. It is a space shortage. When the price of a lane rises while the cargo on it shrinks, buyers are not bidding the price up. Sellers have less to sell. The people setting air freight rates this winter are the airlines that cancelled, rerouted or shrank flights, not the shippers who need them.

Prices up, volumes down

The China–Europe lane is the clearest case. WorldACD splits the 17% fall into mainland China, down 8%, and Hong Kong, down 32%. It links the drop to the end of EU de minimis exemptions on 1 July. (De minimis is the rule that let low-value parcels enter duty-free. Losing it hit e-commerce shipments hard.) It also points to a €2-per-item handling fee that started on 1 November. So the cargo is gone for a policy reason, not because the market cooled. Yet the price went up.

Freightos, which runs its own air price index, saw the same thing a day later. In its 10 November update, China–Europe prices rose 11% in a week to $4.87 a kilo, up 23% on the year.

On the transpacific, demand is real, but price is still running well ahead of it. WorldACD put China and Hong Kong to US tonnage up 8% on the year in October. Rates on that lane rose 30%, to $6.47 a kilo. Freightos said China–US prices rose another 3% in early November, to more than $8.00 a kilo. That already equals last year’s high, which came in mid-December 2025. This year, the market has matched that peak level about five weeks earlier in the calendar.

Freightos gave two reasons beyond peak season. First, jet fuel prices are still high, which raises the floor under rates. Second, demand for data centre hardware on Far East to North America routes has kept pressure on prices. Its summary was blunt: “Air rates out of the Far East continued to climb last week on peak season demand.”

Where the space went

Look at the airlines and the capacity story comes into focus.

IAG Cargo has no freighters of its own. It relies on the holds of passenger jets, which the industry calls belly capacity. In Q3 its traffic fell 13.9% to 1.1 billion cargo tonne-kilometres, or CTKs (one CTK is one tonne flown one kilometre). Revenue still rose 3.9% to €294m, Air Cargo News reported on 9 November. Yield, which is revenue per CTK, rose 20.7% to 26.70 cents.

IAG’s explanation was direct: “Cargo capacity continued to be impacted by disruption in the Middle East.” It suspended flights to Abu Dhabi, Amman, Bahrain, Doha, Dubai, Tel Aviv and Jeddah, and moved capacity elsewhere. It also lost third-party long-haul freighter capacity that had been cancelled.

Compare IAG’s rivals. Lufthansa Cargo’s revenue rose 26% on traffic up 11%. Air France KLM’s revenue rose 25.2% on traffic up 8%. Both carriers grew volume and price together. IAG lost volume and still grew revenue. That gap shows how much a carrier can charge for space when there is not enough of it.

Cathay Cargo shows the same problem from the freighter side. Before the Middle East conflict began at the end of February, Dubai was the midpoint stop for five weekly Cathay freighters to Europe. Cathay has not flown to Dubai or Riyadh since. Over the summer, its Europe freighters made technical stops (stops mainly to refuel) in Astana, Kazakhstan. This winter, they will stop at the new Navi Mumbai airport and in Bengaluru instead, The STAT Trade Times reported on 10 November.

Why not just fly direct? Dominic Perret, Cathay’s Director Cargo, said doing so would mean “about a 20 percent payload haircut.” In plain terms, a non-stop flight needs so much fuel that it can carry a fifth less freight. Every rerouted or fuel-heavy flight takes some kilos out of the market.

Seasonal timing makes it worse. WorldACD said freighter capacity rose 3% in week 44, but belly capacity fell 3%, as airlines’ winter schedules began. Capacity out of Europe fell 6% in a week. Freightos said winter schedule capacity cuts helped push transatlantic rates. “Transatlantic air cargo rates have climbed by 33% over the last month to $2.90/kg,” it said.

The Europe and US export puzzle

That transatlantic jump is the one number that cuts against a cooling story for Western exports. It deserves a careful look.

Freightos’s Northern Europe to North America index rose 9% in its latest week. WorldACD’s October data also showed Europe-origin spot rates up 35% on the year and North America-origin up 53%.

But the Baltic Air Freight Index, the Baltic Exchange’s weekly benchmark compiled by TAC Index, tells a different short-term story. In the week to 2 November, London Heathrow outbound fell 23.2% in a week. Frankfurt fell 6.5% and Chicago 4.2%, the STAT Trade Times reported on 4 November. The global index eased 1.1%. All three Western hubs are still well above last year: Heathrow up 34.4%, Frankfurt up 25.7%, Chicago up 17.9%. But week to week, they are going the wrong way for anyone hoping for a rally.

Our reading: Western export prices are high, but they rest on a schedule change rather than a cargo surge. Europe-origin tonnage rose only 4% on the year in October, by WorldACD’s count. A price jump driven by schedule cuts tends to hit once and then drift as airlines shuffle aircraft and forwarders shop around. Heathrow’s 23% weekly fall shows how fast that can happen. A month-on-month gain to $2.90 tells you where the level is now. It does not tell you the weekly direction is up.

Asia is different. There, the capacity loss is structural: closed Gulf hubs, long detours, payload penalties and fuel costs. In the Baltic print for the week to 2 November, Shanghai outbound was up 14.4% on the year and Hong Kong up 28%. Perret expects the AI and data centre boom to keep going: “I expect it to roll over at least into 27 and possibly beyond that as well.”

What this means for forwarders

First, quote Asia-origin air on short validity. Seven days is safer than fourteen while prices move 3% to 11% a week. A quote that was good on Monday may lose money by Friday.

Second, book space early from China, Hong Kong, South Korea and Japan to the US. WorldACD expects transpacific spot rates to rise further ahead of Black Friday and Thanksgiving. It said Asia Pacific to US spot rates rose more than 15% over three weeks to $7.67 a kilo, with South Korea and Japan above $8.

Third, do not assume a falling lane means falling volume, or the reverse. China–Europe proves the two can move apart. Shippers who cut air volumes after the de minimis change are not getting cheaper space. If anything, they are paying more for less.

Fourth, watch the routing. Cathay has not said whether it will load cargo at its India stops. Forwarders with India–Europe shipments should ask, because Indian demand is strong. WorldACD said Middle East and South Asia tonnage rose 10% on the year in October, boosted by Indian exports ahead of Diwali.

Fifth, on Western exports, be ready to renegotiate. The transatlantic jump may tempt shippers into longer-term commitments at today’s level. With Heathrow already falling sharply week on week, short commitments look wiser.

WorldACD forecasts worldwide tonnage to grow 6% on the year in Q4. That is steady, not explosive. Prices are running far ahead of it because capacity is short. In our view, that is unlikely to change before the Gulf hubs reopen to the carriers that left them.

Our call

Our prediction: through the end of November, outbound rates from London Heathrow, Frankfurt and Chicago fall week on week in more weekly prints of the Baltic Air Freight Index (the Baltic Exchange’s weekly air freight benchmark) than they rise. Shanghai and Hong Kong outbound stay at least 10% above year-ago levels in every weekly print until peak season ends in mid-December.

Sources

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