World Cup Final the red card for LatAm-N America airfreight boom

Freight forwarders in Latin America and their customers are trying to cope with a stark change in airfreight capacity to North America. The football World Cup boosted flights between the hemispheres, but after the final, capacity shifted from the sector. Figures from WorldACD for 1-26 July show airfreight rates from Central and South America to North America rose 7.3% during the period, although volumes contracted 1.5%. Overall chargeable weight from the region’s airports climbed 1.5%, fuelled by rising volumes flown within Latin America, to Asia Pacific and Europe, while tonnag to Africa, the Middle East, India, and North America declined. Prices to Asia Pacific sank, but increased in all other sectors for a 9.3% overall rise of outbound rates from the region, over the same period in 2025. In the run-up to the football mega-event, Latin American and US airlines had beefed-up their presence in the market. Colombia-based Avianca, the region’s second-largest, added 42 weekly flights to the 400 weekly services to 14 US points it had been running last year. After the World Cup final, schedules shifted: US airlines have taken aircraft out of South America to deploy them on transatlantic routes for the summer season, says Federico Calvo, director of Intermodal Logistics. “American, Delta and United are all pulling passenger capacity from their Latin America schedules and are taking that to the North Atlantic,” he said, adding that those cuts affected primarily services to Miami, the top airfreight gateway between the two regions. This was bad news for forwarders seeking US-bound lift from Argentia. Traffic from Buenos Aires’ Ezeiza Airport has shown steady growth in Chilean salmon exports, as the Argentine capital is easier to reach from Chile’s exporters, who face a slalom of trucking and ferry services to move their fish to Santiago. Over the past couple of years, more and more of them have embraced the route via Buenos Aires, Mr Calvo noted. Over time this has raised northbound pricing from Ezeiza to the level charged from Santiago, he added. Argentina’s own US-bound exports have benefited from the tariffs Washington has levied on goods from Brazil, showing increases in volumes of beef as well as pharmaceuticals. The 25% tariff on a range of Brazilian exports, based on allegations of unfair trade practices – threatens between $7bn and $11bn of Brazilian exports to the US, according to estimates from Brazil’s government and National Confederation of Industry respectively, accounting for about 18% to 26% of Brazil’s exports to the US. Demand for lift will increase when the growing season in Argentina gets under way, Mr Calvo noted. Unlike bellyhold lift, freighter capacity to North America has been relatively unchanged. There is a knock-on effect on the northbound market from other freighter activities serving Buenos Aires, though. Having been granted unlimited freedom to add freighter flights to Argentina in April – including permission to offer domestic cabotage – Emirates started charters to Ezeiza, Santiago, and Quito the following month. While this does not affect US-bound flows from the region, it alleviates capacity pressure from Argentina by offering direct transatlantic capacity, reducing the need for exporters to move traffic to Europe via US gateways. An even bigger impact has been the rise of e-commerce flows from China to Argentina, which spawned direct freighter flights from China to the Argentine capital. As the trip costs are covered by the pricing for inbound traffic, rates out of Argentina, as the freighters head back to China, has been very aggressive, said Mr Calvo. E-commerce is booming in Argentina. In April, online sales were up almost 136% on a year 10th place worldwide, in terms of sales of used articles and direct transactions between users. The rapid growth has sparked Aeropuertos Argentinas to react to e-commerce with plans for a new 12,000 sq metre terminal. It also aims to expand Ezeiza’s cold storage capacity from 4,500 sq metres to 7,000 sq m. So far it is unclear when these projects will get under way.