Ecommerce boom fails to fix Latin America air cargo imbalance

Ecommerce volumes are climbing across Latin America's southbound airfreight lanes, yet the region's structural directional imbalance persists because industrial exports are shrinking at the same time. That is the core message from two carrier chiefs speaking at TIACA's Air Cargo Forum in Miami last week.

LATAM Cargo group CEO Andrés Bianchi told The Loadstar the online retail numbers do not tell the whole story of southbound demand.

"First of all, it's important to note that ecommerce volumes have increased, but other commodities have decreased," he said. "That means still you face the imbalance, because the export sector is doing quite well."

Auto parts and mining equipment number among the affected industrial goods. A broader cargo mix offers diversification. It also introduces new exposures.

"They are much more exposed to regulatory cycles than other commodities. So you have to start thinking differently in terms of the risks you have to manage when you design your operation," Bianchi said.

What does the growth actually consist of?

For Avianca Cargo, ecommerce has become the principal driver of southbound business, above all on the Miami–Colombia corridor.

"We also move mining cargo, auto parts, and pharmaceuticals, but the biggest share and the biggest growth is ecommerce, for sure," CEO Diogo Elias told The Loadstar.

Avianca also carries online retail shipments into Brazil, Chile, Ecuador and Central America. Resumed freighter operations from Miami to Venezuela carry ecommerce too.

The network geometry is asymmetric. Elias said roughly 90% of Avianca's South American cargo into Miami originates from five principal points. From Miami, the carrier serves more than 30 destinations, distributing ecommerce alongside:

• automotive parts
• semiconductors
• mobile phones
• other technology products

Balancing a network, Elias argued, means more than filling the return leg of individual routes.

Where is the cost pressure?

Strong export flows mask strain on shippers. On a separate panel, Bianchi said currency appreciation and minimum wage increases together raised Colombian exporters' labour costs by 40% to 45% in dollar terms over the past year.

"When you try to talk to them about higher prices when they are already facing a cost crunch, your approach has to be different, and you have to be a lot more creative," he said.

Not all of the region's Chinese ecommerce transits the United States. Avianca also routes shipments through Madrid, using its passenger network to link Europe with South America.

"Our main hub in Europe is Madrid," Elias said, calling it the airline's principal European gateway for Chinese ecommerce.

How did freighter deployment shift?

Atlas Air executive Martin Drew said the platforms' ability to develop alternative markets has redrawn freighter deployment. After the US removed de minimis treatment for Chinese shipments last year, platforms redirected volumes elsewhere.

"They ramped up existing markets, or seemingly created new markets, overnight," Drew told The Loadstar.

"A good example was Lima in Peru. One of the biggest platforms said they now needed capacity into Lima. Today, we're still operating three flights a week from China into Lima, and that was a market they just switched over."

The redeployment carried a cost. When US demand recovered, aircraft already committed to Latin America were not readily available.

"We had redirected so much capacity to Latin America that when we were asked for more capacity back into the US, there wasn't sufficient capacity," Drew said.

The shifting routes reinforce Miami's role as a connecting gateway. Rotate's Ryan Keyrouse, in his conference presentation, highlighted transhipments and indirect capacity serving Asia–Latin America demand. He warned that an apparent global balance between supply and demand will not necessarily appear on individual tradelanes.

Can carriers bet on a single growth sector?

Bianchi pointed to pharmaceuticals as a growing commodity alongside ecommerce. Even high-paying cargo carries its own vulnerabilities, he cautioned: pharmaceutical flows can fall when patents expire and local generic production develops.

LATAM's stated approach is adaptability rather than prediction.

"More than understanding and trying to bet on the next big commodity, what we're trying to do is prepare ourselves to be able to react quickly in a cost-effective fashion in order to respond very well to our customers' needs," Bianchi said.

For regional carriers, the practical task ahead is responding to new demand without assuming today's cargo mix stays fixed — and without assuming the imbalance resolves itself.