News / A tale of two airports as LatAm-North America traffic expands

Lima’s Jorge Chávez International Airport (LIM) is on a roll, fuelled by a rapid expansion of exports – but in Santiago, the mood is less ebullient.

For the first time the International Air Transport Association (IATA) picked a city in South America to host its annual World Cargo Symposium in February. The decision, meant as a recognition of the region’s growing importance in global air cargo, put the spotlight on an airport that has undergone a $2bn overhaul that ushered in a second runway, a new control tower, a new passenger terminal three times bigger than its predecessor and brought an expansion and modernisation of the cargo area.

More news about planned cargo development is in the pipeline, according to Arturo Vera, the airport’s head of corporate strategy.

The growth of cargo throughput suggests more capacity is needed; last year 267,153 tonnes of freight and mail passed through the airport, an increase of 16.7% over 2024.

One airline cargo executive remarked that not long ago Chile and Argentina dominated exports of berries from South America, but Peru had rapidly pushed into this sector, adding to its traditional staples of asparagus and avocado in the perishables export arena. Between May and September 2025, Peru exported more than 135,000 tons of blueberries, a 92.9% increase.

In September, the Peruvian government passed an Agrarian Promotion Law, which aimed to double the nation’s agriculture exports over the coming ten years. The airline executive reckons cherries will likely follow.

Such a move, pursued with the same vigour that propelled Peru’s berry exports, would make cherry growers in Chile nervous. While LATAM’s overall exports from the nation were going “fairly well” last year, the cherry season was disappointing as a result of rain impacting the crop, reported Andrés Bianchi, CEO of the cargo arm of South America’s largest airline.

The expansion of LIM should add to the concerns. Air traffic in Chile grew a paltry 0.8% last year. Air cargo volume sank 3.8% in the first 11 months of the year compared with the same period in 2024.

Peter Cerdá, IATA’s regional VP, blamed the decline on high operating costs and lack of capacity at Santiago’s Arturo Merino Benitez Airport, Chile’s primary gateway, and warned that this threatened to undermine its ability to compete with regional rivals like Ezeiza Airport in Buenos Aires.

Others have warned that exports of fruits and salmon, which dominate airfreight loads out of Chile, were being routed over Ezeiza. However, part of the problem for salmon exporters is relatively good road access from the fish farms to Argentina, whereas transport to Santiago is hampered by geography.

LIM has also drawn some criticism, notably over an airport user fee on transit passengers. According to Mr Cerdá, this could result in a loss of between 3% and 11% in transit passenger numbers, which would curtail expansion of the airport’s international network. He added that this was already lagging Bogota and Panama.

Air cargo exports from Central and South America have remained strong. Numbers from WorldACD’s database show overall export tonnage in the 1-22 March window from the region was up 10.1% year on year. Not surprisingly, tonnage to the Middle East and South Asia was down 29.6%, but all other regions show double-digit growth, except North America with a relatively slow 5.6% increase.

The average outbound airfreight rate slipped 0.7%, to $1.60kg, due to double-digit percentage decline to Asia Pacific and a 4.4% drop in pricing to North America to $1.31kg.

Strong growth in the first half of the past year produced a gain of 1.8% in waterborne exports to North America for the full year, according to data from CTS. Tonnages were up year on year until July, albeit at slowing momentum, but contracted in the following months at an accelerating rate until November (down 10.3%), and slowing to a 2.8% year-on-year drop in December.

Southbound volumes in this sector ended 2025 4.3% higher than in 2024, despite a 14.1% drop in December, CTS data show.

Shipping lines’ schedule reliability from Latin America to North America slipped 0.6% in the January/February period, from the previous month, to a value of 71.5%, Sea-Intelligence reported. Compared with the same period in 2025, this marked an improvement of 20.4 percentage points.

The average delay of late vessels decreased by 0.35 days, to 3.78 days, a reduction of 4% from a year ago. Three carriers show schedule reliability over 80%, two in the 70% range, and three were on time between 60% and 70%. Only one line registered schedule reliability below 60%.