Global air cargo demand will grow about 4% in 2026, analytics platform Xeneta now forecasts — slightly above its projection at the end of last year and double the expected growth in capacity. The revision is driven by heavy shipments of AI and data center equipment on the trans-Pacific, a trade that is tightening freighter and belly capacity and setting up a solid peak season in the fourth quarter.

Volume on the Asia–North America lane has recovered rapidly from the summer slowdown. Demand growth has shrugged off two headwinds that would normally curb it: soaring fuel prices and elevated rates.

What is behind the tightening?

Xeneta points to AI and data center equipment as the dominant driver. Servers, racks and associated hardware are high-value, time-sensitive cargo that shippers are willing to move on aircraft rather than by sea, and the scale of data center build-outs in North America is absorbing trans-Pacific lift faster than carriers can add it.

The arithmetic behind the forecast tightens the market further. If demand grows at roughly 4% while capacity grows at about half that rate, load factors rise, marginal capacity becomes expensive, and spot rates firm — conditions that typically define a strong peak season rather than a fragile one.

Why demand is resisting higher costs

Two factors would ordinarily soften air cargo demand at this point in the cycle. Fuel prices have soared, raising carriers' cost base and pushing rates upward. Rates on the trans-Pacific are already elevated by recent standards.

Yet chargeable weight has held firm. The lesson shippers appear to be drawing is that AI infrastructure deployment schedules carry a cost of delay far exceeding the premium on air freight, leaving demand relatively price-inelastic on this lane.

For carriers and freighter operators, that combination — rising input costs, constrained capacity and inelastic demand — supports yield growth into the fourth quarter, provided the equipment pipeline keeps flowing.

What to watch through the peak

• Whether Asia–North America chargeable weight continues its post-summer recovery into November and December.
• Whether capacity additions, from converted and new-production freighters as well as passenger belly space, close any part of the gap implied by Xeneta's demand-versus-capacity growth split.
• Whether fuel prices and elevated rates eventually bite into demand from shippers outside the AI and data center segment, where urgency is lower.
• Whether the 4% global demand forecast holds, given it was revised upward once already from the end-of-2025 figure.

Xeneta expects demand to remain firm through the fourth quarter globally, not only on the trans-Pacific, though the AI-driven lane is where the capacity squeeze is most pronounced.

The forecast implies carriers with meaningful trans-Pacific freighter presence enter 2027 with pricing power intact, while shippers of lower-urgency cargo face the prospect of competing for residual space in a market increasingly reserved for AI infrastructure hardware.