(Includes industry policies, current development status, industry chain knowledge graph, and future development trend forecasts.)
Industry Overview: Air cargo services, also known as air freight, refer to transportation services in which air carriers use aircraft to transport goods from the airport of origin to the destination airport. The core focus lies in the air transportation segment and typically does not include extended services such as ground delivery beyond the airports.
Air cargo plays a crucial role in international trade, particularly for high-value goods, perishable products, and precision instruments. It offers significant advantages including fast delivery speed, low damage rate, high security, and long-distance coverage. By substantially shortening delivery cycles, air cargo accelerates capital turnover within the logistics supply chain.
Building upon this foundation, extended air logistics services further integrate warehousing, distribution, and information management functions, enabling full-chain "door-to-door" logistics solutions.
Industry Policy Background: Air freight service is a core component of the modern logistics system. With its efficient, safe, and cross-regional transportation advantages, it has become a key force supporting international trade, high-end industrial upgrading, and emergency material supply. In recent years, my country has attached great importance to the high-quality development of the air cargo industry, continuously promoting the transformation of the civil aviation industry from "passenger-heavy" to "equal emphasis on passenger and cargo transport." A series of policy documents have been successively issued, including the "14th Five-Year Plan for Air Logistics Development," the "Regulations on Civil Aviation Cargo Transport Management," the "Opinions on Accelerating the Development of International Air Cargo," the "National Logistics Hub Layout Optimization and Adjustment Plan," and the "Implementation Plan on Promoting the Open Interconnection of Logistics Data to Effectively Reduce the Logistics Costs of the Whole Society." These documents construct a policy support system from multiple dimensions, including hub layout optimization, capacity supply improvement, market supervision standardization, data openness and sharing, and logistics cost reduction. This provides a solid institutional guarantee for the large-scale expansion, professional upgrading, and internationalization of air cargo services, powerfully promoting the industry towards a high-quality development stage characterized by high efficiency, collaboration, intelligence, and green development.
Market Benefits: As a rapidly emerging trade form, cross-border e-commerce, driven by continuous policy support and upgrading market demand, has become a core growth engine and important source of cargo for international air cargo. According to data from the International Air Transport Association (IATA), 80% of cross-border e-commerce goods are currently delivered via air transport, contributing over 20% to global air freight demand. This figure is projected to further increase to 25%–30% by 2027, becoming a key engine for industry growth. Domestically, cross-border e-commerce trade continues to expand and leads the growth rate. In 2024, my country's cross-border e-commerce imports and exports reached 2.71 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 14%, 9 percentage points higher than the growth rate of my country's goods trade during the same period, accounting for 6.2% of the total import and export value of goods trade. In the first half of 2025, the steady growth trend continued, with total imports and exports reaching 1.37 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 10.3%, 7.4 percentage points higher than the growth rate of goods trade during the same period, and its share increasing to 6.3%. Exports reached 1.09 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 11.6%, while imports reached 281.18 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 5.5%, with exports remaining the core growth driver. The characteristics of cross-border e-commerce goods-characterized by "small batches, high frequency, and high timeliness"-are highly compatible with the core advantages of air transport. Its continued expansion not only injects long-term, stable demand into the air freight industry but also drives continuous optimization and upgrading in areas such as capacity allocation, customized services, and supply chain collaboration.
Civil Aviation Cargo and Mail Volume: In recent years, air freight has become deeply integrated into the global trade system. Although its transport weight accounts for less than 1% of the total global trade volume, it carries approximately 35% of the total trade value, highlighting its irreplaceable strategic position in the global supply chain. From the domestic market perspective, my country's air freight scale continues to expand, with international routes experiencing particularly rapid growth. In 2024, China's civil aviation cargo and mail volume reached 8.982 million tons, a year-on-year increase of 22.1%, of which international routes accounted for 3.606 million tons, with a growth rate as high as 29.3%, becoming the main engine of growth. This momentum continued in 2025; from January to October, the national civil aviation sector completed a total cargo and mail volume of 8.312 million tons, a year-on-year increase of 13.9%, with international routes growing at 21.7%, continuing to lead the way.
Air Cargo Capacity and Route Numbers: Despite significant demand growth in the past two years, the development of all-cargo aircraft capacity has lagged behind. As of the first half of 2025, there were only 17 cargo airlines nationwide, with a total of 249 all-cargo aircraft, highlighting a structural bottleneck in capacity supply. In terms of network coverage, my country had 5,334 scheduled flight routes in 2024, including 821 international routes. Compared to 953 routes in 2019 before the pandemic, the recovery is still slow. Affected by external factors such as the Russia-Ukraine conflict and the Red Sea crisis, the accessibility and resumption rate of international routes urgently need improvement, becoming a key weakness restricting the industry's development.
Industry Revenue Levels: In recent years, the booming development of global cross-border e-commerce has driven a significant increase in air cargo demand, while capacity supply growth has lagged behind, creating a tight supply-demand balance and pushing industry freight rates to remain high. Data from the International Air Transport Association (IATA) shows that in 2024, global air cargo demand increased by 11.3% year-on-year, while capacity only increased by 7.4%, with demand growth significantly exceeding capacity growth, further supporting rising freight rates. Reflecting on the domestic market, from 2020 to 2024, my country's civil aviation cargo and mail transportation revenue remained stable at over RMB 2.2 per ton-kilometer. Although it slightly declined after the pandemic in 2023, it rebounded to RMB 2.29 per ton-kilometer in 2024, demonstrating the industry's robust profitability and fully reflecting the value advantage of the air cargo industry in the logistics value chain.
Industry Development Trends: The future of China's air cargo service industry will evolve along three main directions: model restructuring, technological empowerment, and ecological synergy. Industry competition will shift from traditional capacity competition to comprehensive supply chain services, extending towards "transportation + warehousing + customized support" and deepening multimodal transport synergy. Smart technology and green development will become the core of the transformation, with digital technology fully penetrating all aspects of operations and sustainable development measures continuously being implemented. Simultaneously, the radiating effect of specialized cargo hubs will become more prominent, with state-owned airlines, private airlines, and international giants engaging in diversified integration. Through resource integration, standardization, and win-win cooperation, an efficient, collaborative, open, and symbiotic industrial ecosystem will be built, driving the industry towards high-quality development.
