Air Cargo Industry

Air cargo is any property carried or intended to be carried aboard an aircraft, encompassing air freight, air express, and airmail, and it moves through a mix of passenger aircraft using spare belly-hold space, dedicated all-cargo aircraft, and combination aircraft that carry both freight and passengers. Roughly half of all air freight travels as belly cargo aboard ordinary passenger flights rather than on dedicated freighters, and industry figures note that fifteen to twenty tonnes of air cargo can be worth as much as thirty to forty economy passenger seats on the same aircraft. The sector is dominated by the integrators, FedEx, UPS, DHL, and TNT, which drove much of the industry's growth from the 1990s onward, including FedEx's 1992 introduction of tracking software that let customers follow shipments from their own workstations. The International Air Transport Association reported a 9 percent rise in freight tonne-kilometers in 2017, and Boeing has projected that global air cargo traffic will more than double by 2041.