Sixty percent of new airfreight contracts starting in Q3 2026 ran for three months or less, more than double the 25 percent share a year earlier, as shippers refuse to lock in fixed annual rates in a market where spot prices averaged US$3.10 per kg in September — 27 percent higher year-on-year.

Xeneta's latest data shows demand growth of 6 percent year-on-year in September, matching August's increase and following 5 percent in July. Capacity grew just 2 percent. That gap pushed Xeneta's dynamic load factor up two percentage points to 62 percent and kept upward pressure on pricing across major trade lanes.

The commercial implications are immediate. Carriers hold pricing power while capacity stays tight, but forwarders face shippers who want flexibility rather than volume commitments. Contracting behaviour is shifting fast — and the annual fixed-rate deal, long the backbone of airfreight procurement, is losing ground.

How is contracting changing?

The move to short durations is accelerating quarter by quarter. In Q2 2026, contracts of three months or less represented 47 percent of new agreements. One quarter later, that figure reached 60 percent.

The detail is telling:

• Three-month contracts accounted for 42 percent of new agreements in Q3, up from 16 percent in Q3 2025.
• Twelve-month contracts fell from 40 percent to 25 percent of new business.
• Contracts running longer than a year made up just 3 percent.

Niall van de Wouw, Xeneta's chief airfreight officer, said shippers want pricing that moves with the market. "A one-year fixed rate deal doesn't fit the current conditions."

Xeneta describes the preferred structure as "floating mechanisms" — a base rate adjusted according to market changes. "There is a high degree of realism in the way shippers are approaching the market," van de Wouw said. "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."

What happened to China-Europe e-commerce?

Trade lane data is diverging sharply. China's low-value and e-commerce exports to Europe fell 40 percent year-on-year in August, according to Xeneta and Trade and Transport Group analysis of China Customs data, after a 25 percent decline in July. The drop coincides with the EU's €3 customs duty on individual items, in force from 1 July.

China-US e-commerce exports moved the other way, up 17 percent year-on-year in August, as the market recovers from the removal of the US de minimis threshold in 2025 — though volumes are measured against a lower base.

Pricing reflects the split. China-Western Europe spot rates rose 10 percent month-on-month in September to US$4.26 per kg, reversing July and August declines, with Xeneta crediting stronger outbound China demand ahead of Golden Week.

Other corridors began their seasonal recovery in September:

• Northeast Asia-Europe: up 5 percent to US$4.74 per kg.
• Northeast Asia-North America: up 5 percent to US$6.03 per kg.
• Southeast Asia-Europe: up 3 percent.
• Europe-North America: up 2 percent; North America-Europe up 4 percent.

Higher jet fuel costs added pressure. Brent crude briefly moved above US$100 a barrel in early September amid continuing Middle East tensions.

Where is disruption still concentrated?

Routes into the Middle East show the largest increases since the escalation of the Iran war. By week 39, covering 21-27 September, rates were 91 percent higher from South Asia and 80 percent higher from Europe than before the escalation in late February.

Northeast Asia-North America rates sat 34 percent above late-February levels, and Southeast Asia-North America 29 percent higher, supported by recovering e-commerce traffic and shipments linked to artificial intelligence infrastructure.

Europe-North America remains the outlier: spot rates are still 20 percent below late-February levels, though the gap has narrowed from 25 percent in August as summer belly capacity exits the market.

Will Q4 bring a real peak season?

Despite stronger-than-expected growth through 2026, Xeneta expects a relatively subdued fourth quarter — unless ocean freight disruption forces a modal shift.

"What will happen in Q4 is too early to call, but the indicators currently point towards a muted final quarter of the year," van de Wouw said.

The wildcard is ocean. Persistent schedule unreliability, renewed Red Sea disruption and port congestion have pushed some Asia-US West Coast ocean rates back towards pandemic-era levels. If the cost and reliability gap between ocean and air widens further, more cargo could move to airfreight.

"We are not yet seeing that in the September data," van de Wouw said. "But it is the factor we are watching most closely."