CMA CGM Air Cargo has added allotment booking functionality to the CargoAi platform, giving its freight forwarder customers digital management of block space agreements, pre-bookings and other recurring capacity contracts for the first time.

The capability is live through CargoAi's CargoMart booking service. Forwarders can now handle allotments and BSAs — the commercial backbone of scheduled airfreight capacity — directly in the platform rather than through manual, negotiated channels.

The two companies also introduced allotment reporting, which they say provides visibility on allocation utilisation and price competitiveness for both the airline and its forwarder partners.

What does the automation actually change?

Allotments and BSAs remain the dominant instrument for securing guaranteed capacity on cargo aircraft. Until now, administering them has been largely a manual process: negotiated bilaterally, tracked in spreadsheets, and reconciled month by month.

CargoAi founder and chief executive Matt Petot framed the development as digitising existing commercial relationships rather than replacing them. "Allotment and recurring booking automation are some of the clearest examples of how digitisation removes friction from air cargo without changing the commercial agreements airlines and forwarders already have in place," Petot said.

He added: "With CMA CGM Air Cargo now live, we are giving their forwarder partners a faster and more transparent way to manage guaranteed capacity, while reducing repetitive operational workload for both sides month after month, but more importantly, full reporting capabilities so they can transparently manage their allocation with airlines."

The reporting element is the tangible operational gain: utilisation data on committed capacity directly affects how forwarders price and allocate space, and how the airline manages its contracted load factors. Neither party previously had this level of shared visibility on the CargoAi platform.

How deep is the CMA CGM–CargoAi relationship?

CMA CGM first placed its capacity on CargoAi in early 2025, when the carrier added booking capability across three online platforms simultaneously as part of a broader digital distribution push. The allotment functionality extends that partnership from spot and ad-hoc bookings into contracted capacity — the larger and more commercially sensitive share of an airline cargo business.

For CMA CGM Air Cargo, the move fits its pattern of building digital distribution channels alongside its expanding freighter fleet and hub strategy at Paris and beyond.

CargoAi's own shift toward AI interfaces

The allotment launch caps a year of platform development at CargoAi. In June, the company made its offering usable through AI platforms including ChatGPT, Copilot and Claude, responding to what it described as a rapid shift in customer behaviour.

CargoAi said it had observed in recent months that forwarders and airline customers increasingly run day-to-day operations outside their traditional transport management system and cargo management system environments, with the centre of gravity moving toward AI interfaces.

That positioning matters for the allotment product's trajectory: if forwarders begin initiating and managing contracted capacity through AI-assisted tools, recurring bookings become a natural automation target — precisely the workload Petot says the new functionality reduces.

The immediate test will be adoption. Allotment holders are conservative by nature; whether they migrate administration of guaranteed capacity from established bilateral channels into a third-party platform depends on whether the utilisation and pricing reporting delivers measurable advantage in the next allocation cycle.