UVRN.org

RESEARCH

Global Air Cargo Demand for 2025 Converges at 3.3%-4.0%, Yet Sourcing Depth Keeps UVRN's Verdict Indeterminate

Aviation · 2026-08-07 14:11

Four independent organizations published full-year 2025 growth figures for global air cargo demand -- and the headline numbers land within an unusually tight 0.7 percentage-point band of 3.3% to 4.0%. But running those four figures through UVRN's Delta Engine, which scores how directly and prominently each source asserts the claim rather than just comparing the numbers themselves, returns INDETERMINATE: IATA, WorldACD, and Xeneta each published dedicated, cargo-specific reports built around this exact figure, while ACI World's number appears as a secondary line inside a broader passenger-and-cargo airport-ranking release. The gap in sourcing depth -- not the numbers -- is what keeps this claim from clearing UVRN's consensus bar, a distinction that matters for anyone deciding how much weight to put behind a single 'air cargo grew X% in 2025' headline.

Findings

  • IATA's official full-year 2025 figures, published January 29, 2026, show global air cargo demand (cargo tonne-kilometers, CTK) up 3.4% year-over-year, with international operations up 4.2% -- the association's strongest full-year cargo result since the 2021-2022 pandemic-era surge, published as a dedicated cargo-demand press release.
  • WorldACD Market Data, which tracks cargo through commercial billing records rather than airline-reported traffic, measured full-year 2025 chargeable weight up 4% over 2024's already-record tonnage, in coverage built specifically around its December/full-year cargo trend data.
  • Xeneta's CLIVE-sourced chargeable-weight tracking independently arrived at the same 4% full-year figure, publishing it as the centerpiece of its own year-end air cargo market report.
  • ACI World's July 2026 Airport Traffic Dataset put full-year 2025 global air cargo throughput growth at 3.3%, on volumes exceeding 131 million metric tonnes -- but ACI reports cargo as one line item inside a release primarily about passenger traffic and busiest-airport rankings, not a cargo-dedicated report.
  • The four headline percentages span just 0.7 points (3.3%-4.0%), yet UVRN's Delta Engine -- which weighs how strongly and directly each source asserts the claim, not just the numeric outcome -- still returns INDETERMINATE, because ACI's lower-prominence secondary mention pulls the sourcing-consistency score below the 5% consensus threshold even though the underlying figures agree.

Delta Engine result

↔ Divergence Detected — Δ 0.2171 (threshold 0.05)

Evidence quality

avg 32.5 · min 25 · max 55 · spread 30