Air cargo's Cinderella story, backbone of global trade fights for respect

Air cargo may be aviation’s best-kept secret, but Michael Steen, CEO of Atlas Air, and Janet Wallace, Managing Director of Cargo Operations and Transformation at Air Canada, made a compelling case at the 82nd International Air Transport Association (IATA) Annual General Meeting and World Air Transport Summit 2026 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. This industry, according to them, quietly powers the global economy, even as it strains under mounting structural challenges.

CNN's Richard Quest opened the panel by acknowledging the industry's image problem. "When we think of cargo, it's the less sexy bit of the aviation industry," he conceded. "It doesn't answer back, it doesn't get air miles. We sort of think of it as the Cinderella part." Steen's response was immediate: "You forgot one thing when you talked about the cargo industry not being as sexy. It's profitable."

The scale of the operation
The numbers alone make a powerful argument. Atlas Air currently operates 113 wide-body freighters across more than 300 destinations in 90 countries, accounting for approximately 13% of the global wide-body freighter fleet. Air Canada, the only combination carrier in North America with a dedicated freighter fleet, operates eight Boeing 767 freighters alongside its passenger belly-hold network, with routes spanning Latin America, Asia, Europe, and domestic Canadian corridors.

The air cargo customers are as varied as the cargo itself. Steen outlined three distinct economies served by air freight.

First is the industrial economy, the engine of production. From high-tech goods to pharmaceuticals, it covers the essential products the world consumes.

Second is the military economy. “In the context of today’s conflicts, militaries worldwide rely on our freighter fleets. In the United States, for example, the Department of War is a major customer, and we move supplies across the globe.”

And third is an economy few consider: entertainment. “Formula 1, for instance, needed 10 dedicated 747 freighters to stage its race in Monaco this week. When Taylor Swift goes on tour, she requires five. These examples show that air cargo supports industries on both a scheduled and ad hoc basis equally.”

“Formula 1, for instance, needed 10 dedicated 747 freighters to stage its race in Monaco this week. When Taylor Swift goes on tour, she requires five.”
Michael Steen, Atlas Air

Tariffs and the turbulence of unpredictability
The panel's central theme was the shock that US trade tariffs, particularly the sweeping measures introduced on what markets came to call Liberation Day, sent through air cargo operations. As the world's largest supplier for e-commerce platforms, Atlas Air felt the impact almost instantly.

"All the e-commerce that was shipped into the United States; some of those platforms, they shut down their sales overnight," Steen explained, "not because of the tariffs per se, but by the lack of procedures."

The chaos was not ideological but operational. Tariff rates changed on Monday, shifted again by Wednesday, and moved once more by Friday, leaving freight forwarders unable to plan and customs officials overwhelmed. Freight, Steen confirmed, was held up at borders. Shipments that had been booked were cancelled within 24 hours. Atlas Air responded by redeploying aircraft to other markets as platforms opened sales activities in countries outside the US.

Wallace echoed the frustration. "We see fragmentation in the market; items moving from single suppliers to secondary suppliers. It's very dynamic. We have to do a lot of scenario planning and focus on journey management." Both executives were careful to distinguish between the principle of tariffs and the paralysing effects of inconsistency. "The tariff per se is not necessarily an issue," Steen said. "It's the lack of a very well-described process and procedure so that we don't have cargo stuck at customs."

Steen, an economist by training, was blunt about the broader trend away from multilateral trade frameworks. "I don't think you can decouple global trade the way that's being discussed now," he said. "It's going to have unintended consequences." He pledged to continue engaging directly with lawmakers and advocating through IATA and other industry bodies to ensure policymakers understand the real-world cost of unpredictability.

A capacity crisis in the making
If trade policy represents air cargo's near-term headache, the supply-demand imbalance in air cargo capacity is a longer-term structural threat. Steen painted a stark picture: of the roughly 620 dedicated freighters currently in service globally, more than 100 are over 30 years old — a wave of retirements approaching rapidly. Against that backdrop, supply is forecast to grow at just 1% annually over the next decade, while demand is projected to expand at between 3.5% and 5%.

The traditional solution, converting retired wide-body passenger jets into freighters, is no longer viable at scale. "We heard yesterday there are 18,000 commercial jets in backlog," Steen noted, meaning the 777-300ERs that would ordinarily be converted "are going to stay in passenger operations for years to come." Atlas Air has responded with what Steen described as potentially the largest wide-body freighter order in history, adding nine aircraft to the fleet in the past 24 months alone. He also welcomed the entry of a second original equipment manufacturer into the wide-body freighter market from next year, calling competition on both the airframe and engine side essential.

In March, Atlas Air Worldwide placed an order for 20 Airbus A350 freighters, with options for an additional 20. The deal makes Atlas Air the largest customer to date for Airbus’ new wide-body freighter program. The A350F remains in development and is scheduled to enter service in 2027.

Air Canada faces the same constraints. "There's no capacity in the marketplace for additional aircraft," Wallace acknowledged. "We're really looking closely at what the next thing is that we need to do." What is clear is that the airline remains committed to its dedicated freighter fleet and would expand it if the aircraft were available.

"That we're modern? We're not modern. There's a whole lot of paperwork that moves through all of our warehouses for every shipment. There are about 30 documents that need to travel."
Janet Wallace, Air Canada

Paper, processes, push for predictability and the digital gap
Air cargo's biggest internal failing is not in the skies; it is in the warehouse. That was the pointed assessment from Wallace when asked to identify the industry's most misunderstood part of the cargo industry. "That we're modern? We're not modern," she said bluntly. "There's a whole lot of paperwork that moves through all of our warehouses for every shipment. There are about 30 documents that need to travel." Despite years of industry-wide conversation about artificial intelligence and digital transformation, she was candid about where reality currently stands. "AI is, you know, it's a dream at this point from a cargo perspective."

A core part of the problem, Wallace explained, is the absence of global standardisation. Regulatory requirements vary across jurisdictions, change without warning, and demand flawless compliance, leaving little room for automated or streamlined processing. "We lack standardisation in terms of all of the requirements around the globe. Standardisation doesn't exist."

Of the 30 documents accompanying each shipment, only one, the airway bill, has been meaningfully digitised. Wallace pointed to IATA's ONE Record initiative, a blockchain-based platform designed to consolidate all shipment data into a single accessible location, as the critical next step. "The single lever that we have within air cargo that's going to help us move forward is the digitalisation moving towards blockchain," she said. "It's going to speed up revenue recognition as well as customs clearance. It's really an accelerator." Asked whether it would actually happen, her answer was measured but positive: "We know it can happen. We know that the mechanics are all there."

Beyond technology, Steen of Atlas Air identified a broader structural need. "We need harmonisation, we need predictability, stability," he said, a call moderator Quest noted with some wry realism, given the current climate of geopolitical volatility and shifting trade policy. Steen acknowledged the difficulty but remained resolute: "We're extremely agile and resilient, and we're going to do everything we can to make sure we can get further in that regard."

Wallace closed with a reminder of what is ultimately at stake. "Air cargo is 35% of the value of global trade," she said. "It is the backbone, and the one thing I would need is further investment in infrastructure, to make sure we have capacity and throughput in our hubs."

The 82nd IATA Annual General Meeting and World Air Transport Summit took place in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, from 6 to 8 June 2026. Michael Steen arrived at Galeão–Antonio Carlos Jobim International Airport (GIG) aboard an Atlas Air B747 8F, accompanied by Atlas Air Chief Operating Officer Klaus Goersch, himself a seasoned B747 captain, who served as pilot in command on flight 5Y045 from Miami to Rio.