AI demand drives 7 percent air cargo growth as spot rates ease

Global air cargo demand rose 7 percent year-on-year in June, driven by strong semiconductor and AI-related hardware shipments, according to Xeneta. Despite demand growth, spot rate increases slowed as Middle East disruption eased, Gulf hub capacity returned and jet fuel prices fell back. Xeneta said AI-linked volumes are offsetting the decline in e-commerce traffic, while shippers continue to favour short-term capacity deals amid market uncertainty. Exceptional demand for semiconductors and AI-related hardware inspired a +7 percent growth in global air cargo demand in June, but spot rates continue to ease in line with expectations after a calming of the Middle East conflict, restoration of capacity through the big Gulf airport hubs, and a fall back in jet fuel prices, according to the latest market data from industry analysts Xeneta. Global air cargo spot rates, valid for up to one month, rose +38 percent year-on-year in June to an average of USD 3.40 per kg but, as Xeneta predicted, the pace of growth is slowing, easing from +41 percent in May – a sign the market is calming from a pricing perspective. The big surprise remains demand as AI volumes continue to make up for the fall in e-commerce traffic, air cargo’s main growth engine over the past 2-3 years. Xeneta’s Chief Airfreight Officer, Niall van de Wouw, called June’s demand growth “remarkable,” and suggested that current air cargo volumes are “defying gravity”, thanks mostly to soaring AI-related shipments on Asia Pacific to North America corridors. “The scale of AI’s impact is easy to underestimate because it sits inside a small slice of total air cargo volume – below 10 percent of what flies. But the facts that confirm its role as the main driver of air cargo growth are undeniable,” he said. “Global semiconductor sales more than doubled year-on-year in April, up +106 percent, the strongest growth since the World Semiconductor Trade Statistics organisation began keeping records in 1986. That surge has made the transpacific this year’s strongest air freight corridor, even as China–US volumes weakened under tariffs.” Wider evidence reinforces AI’s impact. Taiwan, which manufactures the overwhelming majority of the world’s advanced chips, recorded real GDP growth of +15 percent in the first quarter of 2026, its fastest quarterly expansion in almost five decades, driven by semiconductor and AI demand. In South Korea, the two largest chipmakers now account for more than half the entire value of the Seoul stock exchange after both roughly doubled/tripled in value this year. While air freight rates are showing signs of easing globally month-on-month, rates on the Northeast Asia and Southeast Asia to North America corridors gaining most from AI-linked shipments are a clear expression of the AI success story. These rose +41 percent and +42 percent respectively in the final week of June, compared with late February. Rates remain elevated but are easing At the corridor level, uncertainty over the lingering Middle East conflict and AI-linked demand into North America are keeping rates elevated – but they are beginning to ease on Middle East corridors. While rates into the region from South Asia (+88 percent), Southeast Asia (+46 percent) and Europe (+79 percent) remain far above pre-conflict levels, Xeneta says the direction of travel is downward month-on-month as capacity returns. “Of all the predictions we made at the start of the year, the most accurate one was that a wildcard could change everything, and the US-Iran conflict did just that, turning everything upside down. “What we were thinking at the start of the year was not that global air freight spot rates would be up +38 percent 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 stated. Elsewhere, summer passenger schedules, which flood the transatlantic routes with belly capacity, pushed rates down by -25 percent from Europe to North America, compared to late-February winter schedule levels. Demand shows no sign of cooling Behind the slowing rate growth sits a demand picture that shows little sign of cooling in the short-term. The +7 percent growth year-on-year in June was well ahead of expectations and supply, which grew +3 percent, mostly from the return of capacity suspended by Middle East disruption. The imbalance lifted the dynamic load factor three percentage points year-on-year to 62 percent. Dynamic load factor is Xeneta’s measurement of capacity utilisation based on the volume and weight of cargo flown alongside available capacity. Van de Wouw said: “The air freight market has kept on moving and showing its ability to navigate uncertainty. As we have said before, air freight is not in control of its own destiny, but no one can deny its ability to respond and pivot when challenges come along.” For a market widely expected to have a quiet 2026, the demand strength pushed growth up 4 percent year-on-year in the first six