Boeing has published the World Air Cargo Forecast 2024 – an overview of the air cargo industry and long-term forecasts for its development from 2024 to 2043. The forecast is based on Boeing’s market monitoring, a series of economic models, geopolitical world events, the development of trade chains supply, changes in consumer habits, and the like.
Cargo air transport plays an indispensable role in global trade. Its main characteristics are high reliability, speed, and safety. It is particularly suitable for the transport of high-value goods and time-sensitive and perishable goods.
The COVID-19 pandemic has further highlighted the importance of air cargo in global trade.
Air freight traffic has been continuously growing, exceeding pre-pandemic levels in 2024. According to the published forecast, Boeing’s prediction that cargo air transport will double in the next twenty years with annual increases of about 4% stands out.
The increase in the share of online trade in total world trade, the expansion of developing markets, the geographical movement of supply chains, and the global growth of production will further and continuously stimulate the demand for air cargo transport. It is predicted that global e-commerce revenues will grow by around 9% per year until 2029, with the fastest growth in the Asian market, and that air cargo networks and the annual growth of such traffic will play a key role in achieving these revenues.
According to all objective indicators, the connection between East Asia and North America is considered to be the largest air cargo market, followed immediately by the connection between East Asia and Europe, whose cargo capacity has doubled in the last two years due to the war in Ukraine and Russia and the consequent reduction of passenger air transport capacity.
Due to all of the above, the global fleet of cargo aircraft is predicted to increase by about 66% in the next twenty years.
