Your Freight Quote Is Probably Wrong. Here's the Data That Isn't.

Air freight rates are softening, and most shippers I talk to still don’t feel it. The average quote on their desk sits well above what the market is doing this month. The gap between the two is where money is quietly lost, and it’s the reason I want to spend this issue on one question: which numbers should you trust when someone hands you a rate?

Xeneta put the August global air cargo spot rate at $3.13 per kilogram, down 3% on July but still up 24% on a year ago. The more interesting part is the direction. Year-on-year growth peaked at 41% in May, then slid to 38% in June, 28% in July and 24% in August. Demand grew about 6% in August and the global load factor rose to 61%, so this isn’t a demand collapse. It’s a market cooling from an unusually hot spring, when the Middle East escalation at the end of February took roughly 12% of global air capacity out of service.

The regional picture is uneven, which is exactly why one headline number misleads. Against late-February levels, spot rates from Northeast Asia to North America are up 36% and from Southeast Asia to North America up 34%, while Europe to North America is down 25%. Two lanes, same month, opposite stories. A single global average tells you almost nothing about your lane.

Xeneta’s mid-year outlook flipped its long-term rate view from a 5-10% decline (made in December) to a 5-15% increase for 2026, because of the capacity shock. Long-term contract rates reset slowly, spot rates move weekly, and a forwarder quoting you off last quarter’s contract is quoting a market that no longer exists. Xeneta’s own airfreight lead says shippers are buying more short-term capacity right now, testing whether the decline holds before committing further. That’s a sensible instinct, and it only works if you know what the spot market is actually paying.

The Baltic Exchange and TAC Index launched the Baltic Air Freight Indices, daily spot assessments built from a panel of market participants on three Hong Kong export routes: to Central Europe, to the US East Coast and to the US West Coast. They use the same regulated methodology behind the Baltic Dry Index, and they were designed to support physical contracts and derivatives. Alongside them sit Xeneta’s lane-level data and the Freightos indices. None of these is perfect, and each has a different sample, but all of them are transparent and third-party, which a single forwarder’s quote is not.

That’s issue three. If this was useful, forward it to whoever signs off your freight budget.

Dhiraj

Air cargo rates ease as shippers buy short-term capacity, Supply Chain Dive: https://supplychaindive.com/news/air-cargo-rates-ease-shippers-buy-short-term-capacity/830076

Xeneta raises 2026 air freight outlook as Middle East conflict pushes rates higher, Air Cargo Week: https://aircargoweek.com/xeneta-raises-2026-air-freight-outlook-as-middle-east-conflict-pushes-rates-higher/

Baltic Exchange and TAC Index launch new Baltic Air Freight spot indices, AJOT: https://www.ajot.com/news/baltic-exchange-and-tac-index-launch-new-baltic-air-freight-spot-indices-in-response-to-historically-volatile-air-cargo-market

Dhiraj Kalro, LetsTalkSCL, © 2026. All rights reserved. Contact: [email protected]

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