Air cargo rates are easing, and shippers are responding by buying capacity on short-term deals rather than locking in extended contracts, according to reporting from Supply Chain Dive.

The development signals a shift in bargaining power on major trade lanes. When spot rates fall, shippers gain room to defer commitments and test the market week to week. That behavior, in turn, pressures carriers and forwarders who built capacity plans around firmer forward bookings.

What is changing in the buying pattern?

The core change is duration. Instead of signing seasonal or annual capacity agreements, shippers are purchasing space closer to the point of need. Short-term buying lets them capture each downward move in the market rather than anchoring themselves to a rate agreed months earlier.

For freight forwarders, the shift cuts both ways. Spot-driven volumes can lift throughput, but they compress margins when capacity bought on the spot market must be resold into customers who expect falling prices. For carriers, short-term demand makes load factors harder to forecast and weakens the revenue visibility that long-term contracts provide.

Why do falling rates change shipper strategy?

Rate direction drives contract timing. In a rising market, shippers rush to fix prices before they climb further. In a softening market, the incentive reverses: every week of delay can mean a cheaper rate on the same lane. Supply Chain Dive's reporting indicates shippers are now acting on exactly that logic, keeping purchases short and staying flexible.

The pattern also reflects normal seasonal cooling in air freight. Demand for belly capacity and freighter space typically fluctuates with product launch cycles, e-commerce volumes and the shift between ocean and air on cost-sensitive lanes. When urgency fades, air cargo is often the first mode where shippers renegotiate, because spot exposure in the sector runs higher than in container shipping.

What does this mean for carriers and forwarders?

Carriers face a familiar squeeze. Softer spot rates reduce yields just as shippers withdraw from long-term commitments, leaving airlines to chase volume in a market where customers hold pricing leverage. Capacity discipline — removing freighters or shifting them to stronger lanes — is the standard counter, but it takes time to execute.

Forwarders sit closer to the volatility. Their charter and block-space agreements were often priced in a firmer market, and short-term-selling customers hand them the risk that committed capacity goes unused. The commercial consequence is a harder sell on any product that requires advance commitment, from guaranteed capacity programs to fixed-rate annual contracts.

For shippers themselves, the environment is more favorable than it has been during recent peak cycles. Flexibility now costs less than certainty, and the penalty for waiting has largely disappeared while rates drift lower.

What comes next?

Much depends on whether the easing proves seasonal or structural. A demand pickup — from e-commerce surges, disrupted ocean supply chains or new product launches — would push spot rates back up and quickly restore carriers' pricing power. Until such a trigger appears, shippers are likely to keep buying short, and forwarders will need to price flexibility carefully rather than assume the contract market returns on its own.