Steve Smith, founder of the humanitarian relief organization Airlink, has been named to lead the Airforwarders Association, the trade body confirmed.

The appointment places an operator with deep ties to the non-profit aviation sector at the head of an association that represents air freight forwarders — the intermediaries whose volumes fill belly cargo space and freighter decks across US and international networks.

Smith built Airlink into a recognized conduit between airlines and disaster-relief missions, matching flight capacity with humanitarian cargo needs. That background pairs logistics coordination experience with relationships across carriers, forwarders and aid organizations — a network relevant to an association whose mandate covers advocacy, regulatory engagement and industry standards for the airfreight forwarding community.

The Airforwarders Association represents forwarders of varying sizes and works on issues spanning security regulation, customs procedures, liability and airway bill standards. Leadership transitions at the body matter to carriers and forwarders alike: the association acts as a collective voice in Washington on rules that directly affect cargo handling costs, screening requirements and documentation burdens across the supply chain.

Details of Smith's start date, his specific mandate and his predecessor's status were not disclosed in the announcement available to Flightdeck Report.

His arrival comes as the air cargo sector continues to digest capacity shifts driven by e-commerce demand and evolving trade lanes, with forwarders under pressure on margins, digitalization and compliance. How the association's agenda evolves under Smith — and whether his humanitarian-logistics background brings new emphasis on crisis-response capacity — will become clear as he settles into the role.