© Viktor Budyka
Air cargo demand in 2026 is reshaping.
Aevean MD Marco Bloemen forecasts capacity expansion this year will outpace global demand growth, but the market will be characterised by structural shifts.
“We really have… two different bases,” he said. “We have a US slowdown and we have the rest of the world growing.”
At the centre of that divergence are data centres, tariffs, and the redirection of ecommerce flows, with the single biggest demand driver right now being hi-tech linked to AI and data centre construction.
“Data centre components make up 1.4m tonnes of annual air cargo,” Mr Bloemen said, following growth of 39% year on year.
That equates to roughly 5% of total global air cargo volumes – a significant share for a single vertical.
“It is significant, and it’s been growing nearly40%,” he said.
Between April and November alone, hi-tech added roughly 300,000 tonnes into the US market, effectively neutralising weakness elsewhere.
“If the US was not importing all this hi-tech business, it would have shown complete negative air imports,” he said. “Hi-tech saved the day for the US.”
The growth is concentrated in specific components: CPUs rose more than 60% year on year and ADP machine parts nearly 70%. These are heavy, high-value shipments that largely move on dedicated freighters.
And Mr Bloemen sees no immediate slowdown.
“I do think it’s here to stay,” he said. “The investments just require massive amounts of more data centre equipment.”
If hi-tech is cushioning demand, tariffs are clearly suppressing it.
US air imports from Europe grew strongly in the first half of last year before slipping into contraction in the second half, after new tariff measures were implemented.
“We saw that Europe to the US has been growing, on average, roughly 16% compared with the year before,” Mr Bloemen said. “Then the tariffs kicked in and then, literally, the growth stopped.”
The pattern was particularly visible in luxury goods. Italy and France saw heavy front-loading ahead of the tariff introduction, especially in high-value fashion and accessories, before volumes cooled sharply.
The country-level detail shows how uneven the tariff impact has been. The Netherlands saw one of the sharpest reversals, with air exports to the US down 17% in August–December, largely driven by perishables.
“Perishables are quite price sensitive,” Mr Bloemen said, noting that fresh bell peppers accounted for much of the drop. With a 15% tariff in place from July, those shipments “decreased strongly to be shipped as air freight”, as margins simply could not absorb the additional cost.
The UK also felt the shift, moving from 16% growth in the first seven months of the year to a 4% decline thereafter. Germany, by contrast, was “not that much affected”, he said, underlining that tariff exposure varies sharply depending on commodity mix and price elasticity.
The important nuance, however, is that volumes did not collapse; growth simply evaporated.
“It’s not the fact that volumes are declining, but that they were growing before then, and that the growth is slow,” he said.
Without hi-tech demand offsetting the weakness, the narrative would have been much harsher, he added: “You would have had headlines saying US imports down by 10% because of tariffs and de minimis implications.”
Ecommerce remains a structural growth engine, but geography now matters more than volume.
Globally, ecommerce continues to grow at double-digit rates. However, China-US flows were hit hard after the de minimis changes, at one point falling sharply before partially recovering.
Mr Bloemen cautioned against misreading volatile year-on-year comparisons.
“October, November, December were incredibly good,” he said of last year’s peak, meaning later slowdowns could look more dramatic than they are. Instead, the business shifted.
“In the third quarter, 40% of Temu’s business was in Europe and only 31% to the US. It’s completely flipped,” he said.
Aevean’s analysis shows an almost one-to-one relationship between Shein app usage and air cargo flows into individual markets.
“When we talk about de minimis being taken out in the US, then they will just shift to Europe or shift to Latin America,” he said.
Despite tariff drag and geopolitical friction, Mr Bloemen does not expect a weak year in tonnage terms – “it won’t be a bad year”, he said.
Strong outbound Asia lanes will continue to fill aircraft. The challenge lies more in network imbalance and profitability than in volume collapse.
“You have to look at pricing and cost. Fuel will matter. That’s a different story,” he added.
What is clear is that the key forces of 2025 are carrying through into 2026.
“The data centre business is not over. The ecommerce business is not over. The tariffs are having their effect,” he said.
Demand is still growing, but it it is being redirected, front-loaded, exempted and rebalanced. And for now, hi-tech is doing more than expanding – it is holding the market together.
