Air cargo demand rose 11.2% in February 2026 against the same month a year earlier, according to the International Air Transport Association's monthly market analysis.

IATA tracks global freight in freight tonne kilometers (FTK), the standard measure of cargo carried over distance. The February reading, released as part of the association's recurring data series, puts 2026 well ahead of the more modest mid-single-digit growth pattern that ran through most of 2025.

What the monthly series covers

IATA's air cargo market analysis pulls demand, capacity and load-factor data from more than 200 airlines operating scheduled and charter cargo services. The headline FTK figure folds in both belly-hold freight on passenger flights and dedicated freighter operations. Available freight tonne kilometers (AFTK) — the matching capacity metric — give the association a global load factor that carriers benchmark against their own network reports.

The carriers running the heaviest freighter widebodies — Cathay Cargo, Emirates SkyCargo, Qatar Airways Cargo, Korean Air Cargo, Cargolux and the integrator fleets operated by FedEx, UPS and DHL Aviation — treat the IATA series as the central external reference for their own monthly traffic updates. Investors and lessors treat it the same way, since the FTK line on an airline's quarterly earnings almost always echoes what IATA published eight weeks earlier.

Why February is a tricky comparison

Lunar New Year always complicates February reads. Factory shutdowns across mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Vietnam pull electronics and consumer-goods tonnage out of the air freight market for one to two weeks, and the holiday's date shifts a little each year. The 2026 Lunar New Year falls in mid-February, so part of the month still reflects pre-holiday export urgency while the back half catches the slower post-holiday restart. IATA's regional commentary adjusts for that, but the underlying headline can still swing on calendar noise.

What a double-digit number tells operators

That kind of year-over-year rise suggests belly capacity on long-haul passenger services is doing more of the lifting again, on networks where carriers have rebuilt widebody utilization since the post-pandemic trough. Dedicated freighters — many converted from older Boeing 747-400F and 777-300ER airframes, with more 777-200Fs entering the pipeline from GE Capital Aviation Services and others — remain the swing capacity for surges, particularly in the e-commerce flows running out of Shenzhen, Hong Kong and Seoul.

Air cargo pricing tends to lag volume by a quarter or two. With ocean freight rates still hovering near multi-year lows, forwarders have been using the IATA series as the cleanest read on whether shippers are rerouting tonnage to aircraft. If February's pace carries through the spring, expect carriers to compress parking cycles for grounded freighters and integrators to push harder on weekend block-hour utilization on the smaller narrowbody feeders that feed their hub sortation systems.

What to watch next

IATA's next monthly cargo report, covering March 2026, is scheduled for release in early May. Carriers, lessors and forwarders will be checking whether the February number extends into the quarter or fades as manufacturing inventory normalizes — a question that, for now, the data has not yet answered.