News / Air cargo matures at last, as online booking grows in popularity

© Daniil Peshkov |

Has the air cargo industry finally grown up? Xeneta’s Niall van de Wouw said today that the lack of a chaotic peak showed market maturity; while the self-styled “forwarder’s airline”, Cargolux, has announced it is now selling capacity across a variety of online platforms, a marked departure from its previous strategy – although CEO Richard Forson first mooted it over a year ago. 

Booking maturity may not yet mean profitability for the tech providers, but airlines are increasingly embracing a wide variety of air cargo booking platforms – and the data they provide.  

Cargolux said it had joined three major platforms – CargoAI, cargo.one and Freightos’ WebCargo – in a bid to increase its “speed to market” capabilities 

Mathieu Weber, Cargolux’s VP digital sales, said demand for digital processes was growing. ”We are intent on embracing change and broadening our digital reach. Joining marketplaces offers an additional, intuitive tool for our clients to book capacity that matches their requirements.” 

When the booking platforms started out, there was a prediction that airlines would only join one, or possibly two. But carriers have, instead, been keen to embrace them across the board, with each offering different qualities – and data elements.  

Finnair Cargo, which sells about 60% of its capacity via a range of platforms, including its own, likes the variety they offer. 

“I think they all have a little bit of a niche,” said Anna-Maria Kirchner, head of global sales. “We’re very neutral to that. We also don’t go to a forwarder and say, oh, you should be using ours, or you should be using this.  

“Of course, there’s distribution costs, but it doesn’t matter. In the end, we’re getting data as well. And there’s no human error.” 

She added: “I think they’re all very good. Some are now developing more, so that you can do interline bookings, or offering wallets for non-CASS agents. So I think they all have a little bit of their niche, and we like to keep the spectrum open.” 

The market is becoming increasingly broad. While Freightos was the among the first to launch in 2012, cargo.one, cargoAI and Awery soon followed. And it’s not over: last month start-up Belli, which offers cargo management software, won €330,000 at a global tech conference FutureTravel. 

Co-founder Jeff Pan, former McKinsey consultant as well as head of the software engineering team at AirAsia’s cargo arm Teleport, claimed Belli offered something different. 

“Our team is unusual in that we’re ex-consultants who also have experience running an airline’s cargo tech team and software engineering expertise. Every airline we sit down with usually learns something new within the first hour. My biggest frustration when I was working with cargo software vendors was that really simple things, like setting up an API, was a months-long ordeal.” 

Despite growth, profitability has eluded even the larger of the sites, however. Freightos, which did a SPAC listing a year ago and has counted Qatar Airways, FedEx and IAG among its investors, hopes to be profitable by 2027. Cargo.one, meanwhile, is owned by a variety of venture capital investors with Lufthansa also a minority shareholder. French GSSA ECS Group, via its Cargo Tech venture, owns part of CargoAi – but carriers seem unconcerned by ownership; more concerned about finding customers. 

“Smaller forwarders find us through online channels,“ said Ms Kirchner. “You might not even know them , but they’re on WebCargo or Cargo AI and so on, and find us through these channels. That’s why this is a very important product for us because we are a niche carrier. We are not one of the big ones and are not intending to be one.” 

While Finnair tends to book only general cargo via third-party platforms, it can offer more specialised bookings via its website. But its Korean business is sold 100% online, said Ms Kirchner. 

“Everyone told us that Asian customers wouldn’t book online as it’s in English. But they are all signed up. And if they have a block space agreement or a contract, it’s all fed into the system. They prefer that instead of calling or emailing,” 

The market, while maturing, still has room for growth. Freightos last month reported, for the 19th consecutive quarter, a record number of transactions, up 26% year over year. 

Meanwhile, Cargolux is now integrating the platforms into its systems. It said that after the initial launch in the Benelux and Germany, “availability on marketplaces will be gradually expanded to cover other countries and geographical regions”.