A quiet but striking thing has happened to the way air freight is bought this year. Shippers have all but stopped signing the long, fixed-rate contracts that used to anchor the market. In the third quarter of 2026, three in five air-cargo deals ran for three months or less, up from one in four a year earlier. The traditional twelve-month deal, long the backbone of annual procurement, is now the minority choice.
The latest market read from rate benchmarking platform Xeneta, published on 2 October 2026, shows demand still outpacing capacity and spot rates holding well above last year. But the more revealing story is in how shippers are behaving: they are refusing to lock themselves in, reaching instead for short-term and floating-rate mechanisms that let them move with a volatile market rather than bet against it. Here is what the numbers say, why buyers are reacting this way, and what it means for how you should be approaching your own air-freight contracts this peak and into 2027.
The Numbers: Demand Still Winning the Tug-of-War
September kept the pattern that has defined 2026, demand growing faster than the capacity available to carry it.
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Demand up, capacity trailing. Global air-cargo demand rose +6% year on year in September, while capacity grew just +2%. That gap pushed the dynamic load factor up 2 percentage points to 62%, a measure of how full aircraft are by both weight and space, and a sign the market remains genuinely tight.
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Rates holding high. The global average air-cargo spot rate reached USD 3.10/kg, up 27% year on year and 2% month on month. Rates are not spiking, but they are not softening either.
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The hot lanes are the usual suspects, plus one. Northeast Asia to North America ran at USD 6.03/kg (+5% month on month) and Northeast Asia to Europe at USD 4.74/kg (+5%). The China-to-Western-Europe corridor jumped to USD 4.26/kg, up 10% in a single month, the standout move.
This is a market where capacity is the scarce commodity and price reflects it. In that environment, the instinct used to be simple: lock in a year of capacity at a known rate before it climbs further. That instinct has gone into reverse.
The Real Story: Shippers Are Refusing to Lock In
The headline figure is not the rate, it is the contract length behind it.
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Short deals are now the norm. Agreements of three months or less made up 60% of the market in Q3 2026, up sharply from 25% a year earlier. Three-month deals on their own rose to 42%, from just 16%.
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The annual contract is in retreat. Twelve-month deals fell to 25%, down from 40% the year before. Contracts running longer than twelve months accounted for a mere 3%.
In other words, the market has flipped from long commitments to short ones in the space of a year. Shippers are not sitting out, demand is up 6%, they are simply declining to fix a single number for twelve months in conditions they do not trust to stay still.
Xeneta’s Chief Airfreight Officer, Niall van de Wouw, put the mindset plainly: “There is a high degree of realism in the way shippers are approaching the market. There remains a lot of instability and that’s making it almost impossible for shippers to make long-term capacity deals without having T&Cs in place to deal with these volatile conditions.”
Why a Fixed Annual Rate No Longer Fits
The flight to short deals is not indecision. It is a rational response to a market that has delivered one shock after another, a Middle East capacity squeeze, shifting e-commerce flows, tariff turbulence and an on-again-off-again peak. A number fixed in January can look badly wrong by June.
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The twelve-month deal is becoming the exception. “A one-year fixed rate deal doesn’t fit the current conditions,” van de Wouw said. “Shippers are looking to build mechanisms which add flexibility to their commercial relationships with forwarders, and which will help to ensure they hold across the year.” He went further: “A one-year deal without any adjustment mechanism is becoming more the exception than the rule. If they do exist, not many will survive the upcoming 12 months.”
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Short deals are a holding pattern, not the endgame. The surge in three-month agreements, van de Wouw explained, is “one of the current mechanisms shippers are using while they take time to negotiate what they see as a fairer way to buy capacity.” The destination most buyers want is a smarter long-term deal, one with a built-in adjustment mechanism, not an endless series of three-month scrambles.
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The flows underneath are still moving. The volatility is real in the data. China’s e-commerce exports to Europe fell 40% year on year in August as the EU’s low-value parcel rules bit, while the same trade to the US rose 17%. When whole lanes can swing that hard, a rigid annual rate card is a liability.
What a “Fairer” Deal Actually Looks Like
If the fixed annual rate is dying, what replaces it? This is where the detail matters, and where buyers can get it wrong.
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Floating, but floating on the right benchmark. Van de Wouw was specific about what a good flexible mechanism should track: “Our position is that this should be based on the all-in rates airlines are charging freight forwarders, which we see as a better floating mechanism than a blunt fuel surcharge.” In plain terms, a rate that moves with the true, all-in cost of carriage is fairer to both sides than one bolted to a crude fuel adjustment that may bear little relation to what the market is actually doing.
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Visibility is the prerequisite. You cannot index your rate to the all-in market if you cannot see the all-in market. A floating mechanism is only as good as the benchmark underneath it, which means the shipper needs a clear, honest read on what capacity is really costing, lane by lane.
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Flexibility cuts both ways. A well-built adjustment clause protects the shipper when rates climb and the carrier when they fall. That symmetry is what makes it durable, and what makes van de Wouw confident that rigid deals “will survive” far less well over the coming year.
The Peak That May Not Peak
One more signal sits inside the September data, and it should shape how aggressively you commit this quarter.
- No strong peak in sight, yet. “October is under way and we are not picking up signals of a strong peak season from our shipper and forwarder community,” van de Wouw said. “What will happen in Q4 is too early to call, but the indicators currently point towards a muted final quarter of the year.” Capacity is tight, but the traditional Q4 demand surge has not shown up in the order book. That is one more reason buyers are keeping their options short rather than paying up for a peak that may not arrive.
The Bottom Line
The market has voted with its contracts. With demand outrunning capacity but the ground shifting constantly beneath everyone’s feet, shippers have decided that flexibility is worth more than certainty on a single fixed number, and they have moved decisively, from a quarter of deals being short-term a year ago to three-fifths today. The smart move is not to pick a side between “lock it in” and “stay spot.” It is to build a relationship that can flex with the market on a benchmark you trust, short-term cover where you need it now, and a longer deal with a real adjustment mechanism when the terms are right.
Buy Capacity the Way the Market Is Actually Moving
The shippers coming out ahead this year are the ones treating their air-freight contracts as living arrangements, not annual bets. ACC benchmarks your lanes against what capacity is genuinely costing, all-in, carrier by carrier, and structures cover that fits the conditions in front of you, whether that’s short-term flexibility through an uncertain peak or a longer deal built to flex rather than break. As a neutral broker we have no rate card to defend and no carrier to favour: our only job is to make sure you are buying capacity on fair, current terms. Talk to ACC before your next renewal about putting the right mechanism, not just the right number, in place.
Sources: Xeneta press release, “Shippers Seek Airfreight Rates ‘Floating Mechanisms’ Before Committing to Long-Term Capacity as Demand Grows +6% Year-on-Year in September” (2 October 2026), quoting Niall van de Wouw, Chief Airfreight Officer · Air Cargo News, “Xeneta: Shippers want short-term deals as demand squeezes capacity” (2 October 2026)
