Colombia's air cargo market is "absolutely booming," according to a report by The Loadstar — but the same ecommerce wave driving that growth is squeezing the bellyhold and freighter capacity shippers need to move their goods.

The observation, laid out in the freight publication's coverage of the South American market, captures a dynamic now familiar across trade lanes: demand is rising faster than the aircraft capacity available to carry it. Ecommerce volumes — dense, time-definite cargo that books space at premium rates — are absorbing capacity that traditional freight once relied on.

For Colombia, the pressure comes at a moment when the market is already running hot. The country's cargo flows, anchored in perishables exports such as flowers and fresh produce, depend on predictable access to widebody bellyhold space and dedicated freighter lift, particularly on northbound routes to North America.

Ecommerce traffic competes directly with that freight. Online retail consignments move in the same holds and on the same aircraft, and their shippers' willingness to pay for speed and reliability bids up the cost of the remaining space. The result, as The Loadstar's reporting indicates, is a market where capacity is tight and getting tighter even as volumes climb.

The "absolutely booming" characterization signals that the constraint is not demand. Colombian air cargo is growing. The constraint is supply — the number of freighter aircraft, the bellyhold capacity offered by passenger carriers, and the scheduling decisions that determine where both are deployed.

That leaves shippers of traditional Colombian exports facing a structural question. Ecommerce volumes are unlikely to retreat; they are the growth engine of the market. Capacity, by contrast, responds slowly, through fleet decisions, freighter conversions and network changes that carriers and lessors make on multi-year timelines.

The Loadstar's report did not detail specific carrier responses, freighter deployments or rate movements in the Colombian market. What it does establish is the direction: demand is strong, ecommerce is consuming a growing share of available lift, and shippers are feeling the squeeze on capacity.

How carriers serving Colombia — and the freighter operators that could redirect capacity into a booming market — respond over the coming quarters will determine whether the tightening translates into sustained rate pressure or new lift arriving to absorb it.