AI in airfreight: After the plane lands

The rapid expansion of US data centres is creating new demand for high-value, time-critical airfreight. While most infrastructure moves by road, critical components such as semiconductors, server hardware and networking equipment rely on air cargo, with delays potentially disrupting entire construction schedules. AI-driven demand for chips and data centre hardware is intensifying pressure on airfreight capacity and specialised handling. Semiconductor shipments are increasingly influencing global air cargo volumes, requiring secure, reliable solutions for valuable, fragile and temperature-sensitive equipment. The industry is shifting towards dedicated logistics solutions for data centre supply chains, focused on sequencing rather than just transportation. Investments in specialised warehouses, secure handling and integrated delivery networks are helping ensure components arrive at construction sites in the precise order required, while creating a longer-term replacement and upgrade freight cycle. Data centres are among the largest construction projects happening in the United States at the moment, and they can be held up at times by packages you could carry under your arm. “Small parts for servers. Chips that need to arrive on schedule,” Tyler Van Kooten, director of business development at Circle Logistics, said. “The small parcel shipments have the potential to hold up large projects. Those are the ones that rely on airfreight.” The bulk of data centre architecture moves by road. Steel, transformers, switchgear, cooling systems, most of it oversized. Air’s slice of the pie is narrow but high-value and high-priority. From hardware like rack servers and semiconductors to high-speed routers and thermal management parts. When it comes to these projects, skyrocketing demand means one thing: speed is of the essence. “If it’s not there, that holds up the next step, which is holding up the next step, which is holding up the next step,” Van Kooten stated. The crunch shows up in the quotes he gets back from carriers. “People are booked up for four, five, six months when we’re going to them asking for pricing. If you’re waiting till the week or month of, you’re already behind.” The freight behind the boom The volumes explain the pressure. Xeneta reckons semiconductors and AI hardware now account for around 10 percent of global airfreight volume, and says demand for them is what pushed June volumes up 7 percent year on year against capacity growth of just 3 percent. Spot rates averaged US$3.40 per kg, up 38 percent. The transpacific is where it’s concentrated: rates on the Northeast Asia and Southeast Asia to North America corridors rose 41 percent and 42 percent respectively in the final week of June against late February, and global semiconductor sales more than doubled year on year in April, up 106 percent. Semiconductor shipments lean disproportionately on airfreight: high value, urgent, tied to production schedules synchronised across regions. That leaves them exposed to any setbacks in Taiwan, the dominant supplier of advanced chips. That’s the origin story. The next question is, what happens after the plane lands? Built for valuable and vulnerable freight Carriers have been quietly building handling capability for exactly this cargo. Lufthansa Cargo runs dedicated “Vulnerables” and “Valuables” products for secure handling and storage of high-value, fragile shipments. Kuehne+Nagel has also developed monitoring tools that track cargo integrity in transit, whether temperature-controlled, high-value or time-critical. Dimerco is adopting IATA’s ONE Record standard with Cathay Cargo for real-time data sharing. Standard handling doesn’t cut it anymore. Chips and servers carry security, shock and temperature requirements ordinary freight doesn’t, so the industry is retrofitting accordingly. Seven million sq ft The biggest bet on the landing side belongs to DHL, which in March announced ten dedicated data centre warehouse sites across North America, totalling more than seven million sq ft, all due to go live in 2026. The pitch is white-glove handling for servers and power modules, rack configuration moved off the live construction site into secure warehouses, and specialised transport from there to site. Note what that solves. Not lift, but sequencing. Circle Logistics says the true challenge is getting dozens of inbound shipments to converge on a live construction site in the right order, against lead times that can stretch 12 to 18 months. And the aircraft are filling up. Xeneta’s dynamic load factor, which measures utilisation against available capacity, hit 62 percent in June, three points up on 2025. The airports feeling it Dallas/Fort Worth is a useful measure of what this does to a gateway. The airport posted a 7 percent rise in airfreight throughput in its 2025 fiscal year, even with e-commerce slowing after the de minimis exemption was scrapped. A big influx of frames for AI centres drove much of that. Milton d