Air Capacity Into Latin America Soars, But 54% of Airports Saturated

Cargo volumes out of Latin America grew 3.6% in the first half of the year, yet 54% of the region's airports are already showing signs of saturation, according to ALTA CEO Peter Cerda. Growth, it turns out, is the easy part. Concrete is harder.

Air Canada is doing its bit to feed the trend. Last month it resumed Santiago and Lima service, flying four weekly nonstop B787-9 rotations to the Chilean capital from both Montreal and Toronto — the only direct operator on those routes. Its return to Peru, twice weekly from Toronto and Montreal on the same type, ended a three-year absence. Bogota also got the B787-9, replacing the smaller A330, and the seasonal Montreal–Guatemala City A330 service launched in October 2025 is now year-round.

Other carriers smell opportunity too, partly thanks to open skies policies in Argentina and Ecuador. One report suggests Ethiopian Airlines is weighing cargo flights to Buenos Aires using traffic rights that include cabotage. Emirates, already entrenched in the region, lifted its Buenos Aires freighter operation to seven flights a week this year and logged 18% export growth from the region across January–September.

What does the growth look like on the ground?

IATA's first-half figure of 3.6% understates the momentum. ALTA data shows Brazil and Colombia leading through July, up 9.8% and 8.4% respectively. August accelerated further: tonnages out of Brazil and Colombia rose 11.8%, and Argentina topped the percentage table at 17%.

Cerda's warning is blunt: this growth is on a collision course with capacity constraints. Future expansion depends largely on governments and airport authorities accelerating infrastructure investment, he stressed, naming São Paulo Guarulhos, Bogota, Lima and Santiago as airports in urgent need of expansion and modernisation.

There is some money arriving. Airport operator SAASA, which recently began building a second cargo terminal at Madrid's Adolfo Suárez Airport, is scouting Argentina, Chile and Colombia for ramp and cargo services. At Lima's Jorge Chávez Airport it has already spent more than $1m boosting import and export handling, and management wants capacity doubled by 2030.

Where does it hurt right now?

Buenos Aires Ezeiza is the live casualty. Rehabilitation of its second runway — work at the intersection with the main runway, running until 11 November — cuts its usable length from 3,300 metres to 1,850. That's widebody-hostile territory, and Atlas Air, American and Lufthansa have all suspended Buenos Aires flights for the duration. Rotate puts the capacity cut at Ezeiza at roughly 80%.

Landside isn't much calmer. Hillebrand-Gori reports an indefinite trucker strike at Chile's San Antonio port since 29 October, driven by rising fuel costs and toll expansions. Worse is the Mendoza–Chilean ports road corridor, hit by repeated and lengthy closures this season and severe delays as a result.

Maersk says port operations elsewhere in Latin America have been stable. But in its October market update, Alicia De La Guardia, head of digital marketing and digital sales, warned that landside operations stand at a crossroads, with traffic growth stretching both capacity and the established way of doing business.

Can relationships still run the show?

De La Guardia doesn't think so, at scale. The region's habit of solving problems through relationships — knowing somebody who can fix things — won't survive the volumes. "Relationship-driven exception management can work well when volumes are low, routes are familiar, and only a few scenarios need attention," she said. "But relying on this way of supply chain management breaks down under pressure — when market conditions change."

The money on the table is large. Mordor Intelligence projects South America's freight and logistics market growing from $270.18bn this year to $348.78bn by 2031 — roughly a 29% expansion. McKinsey, cited by De La Guardia, concludes that capturing it depends on stronger infrastructure, additional trade corridors and more integrated supply chains, which in turn means road investment and changed business practices.

The bet, then, is straightforward: carriers are adding capacity faster than airports and roads can absorb it, and Ezeiza's 80% capacity cut shows what happens when the two collide. Whether Cerda's infrastructure warning gets heeded before the bottlenecks bite harder will shape pan-American trade lanes into the next decade.