Air Freight as a Shield for Global Uncertainty: mas Air Cargo

Q: What operational advantages does mas' freighter model offer to high-security, time-sensitive industries compared to traditional passenger belly cargo?

A: Our single biggest strategic advantage right now is our position as the largest Mexican cargo airline operating out of AIFA. AIFA is a developing hub with highly modern infrastructure and massive room to scale up. Being the home carrier here gives us a distinct launchpad to grow our network. By contrast, the old AICM faced severe capacity constraints due to congestion and limited physical space. AIFA allows us to build a true network without those bottlenecks.

Guadalajara is another key point in our network, particularly on our routes coming from Los Angeles to AIFA. That market is experiencing a growth in cargo volume, largely driven by the global investment in data centers and artificial intelligence (AI). Globally, the tech and AI boom is currently the single largest driver of air freight growth. Most of this high-value equipment is sourced from Taiwan, and to an extent, Vietnam, Thailand, and Japan, which is giving Guadalajara a brand-new growth trajectory.

While Guadalajara is a critical secondary hub, our primary anchor remains AIFA. We need to scale our network and increase our flight frequency from this airport. This not only makes us a more competitive player for the domestic Mexican market, but it also establishes us as a vital regional partner for international airlines flying into AIFA from Asia and Europe, needing reliable connections to feed into our network.

Q: Under the new corporate structure since taking office as CEO, what are mas' primary geographic expansion milestones and fleet updates?

A: My initial priority was to stabilize and restructure our debt portfolio and, in close co-operation with our shareholders, to help build a sustainable capital foundation, alongside fast-tracking digital transformation initiatives. Internally, a priority was aligning the leadership team, establishing new ways of working together, sharpening our decision-making processes, and building trust so we could move more quickly.

Beyond internal restructuring, a dominant priority has been sourcing aircraft for fleet expansion. This has been exceptionally difficult due to aerospace supply chain bottlenecks. Our growth strategy is built around passenger-to-freighter conversions of relatively young Airbus A330 aircraft. However, this strategy relies heavily on the availability of passenger feedstock, which means used aircraft retired by commercial airlines as they take delivery of new planes. Because Boeing and Airbus are facing severe manufacturing delays, commercial airlines are holding onto their older passenger fleets much longer. Consequently, the supply of feedstock for cargo conversion has essentially dried up.

This lack of available aircraft compounds an already tough cost environment. Every airline faces rising unit costs due to general inflation, but our industry is also dealing with deep supplier consolidation. We operate in a market dominated by an aircraft duopoly and a highly concentrated group of two or three major engine manufacturers. They hold immense market power, which makes controlling unit costs an uphill battle.

To offset these fixed costs, an airline simply has to grow. Navigating this lack of aircraft availability has taken up a significant amount of my time, but we are now very close to securing options that will allow us to resume fleet growth in 2027 and 2028.

Finally, managing consecutive macroeconomic shocks has required constant attention. In my time here, we have navigated two major crises back-to-back: first, the severe tariff and trade disruptions last year, which we successfully overcame, followed immediately by the current fuel crisis and global volatility. Managing these external disruptions while pushing for structural growth remains our daily reality.

Our biggest milestone this year is that we have managed to successfully navigate this fuel crisis while staying firmly on track with our projected financial results. Achieving this simultaneously is a significant win for us.

Operationally, the surge in fuel prices was primarily a cash-flow challenge rather than a profitability issue. We have been successful in passing most of the increased costs through to our customers, which kept our EBIT results positive. However, it created a significant cash-flow exposure due to a timing mismatch: we generally have to pay for fuel earlier than we collect the corresponding revenue. Successfully bridging that gap while hitting our year-to-date financial targets has been a major achievement for the team.

Q: Jet fuel prices remain highly volatile, directly impacting long-haul profitability. How is mas managing its dynamic fuel surcharge strategies to keep your lanes competitive without eroding your operating margins? 

A: It really comes down to strategic customer selection. You need a client mix composed of partners who view air freight as an absolute core necessity for their daily business, rather than a discretionary expense. If they do not rely on it deeply, they will simply scale back volumes or refuse to absorb the cost increases. With the benefit of hindsight, our portfolio choices proved highly resilient.

For example, a large global player in the textile industry had to rely on us even more during the height of the disruptions because their traditional belly capacity options via Middle Eastern carriers suddenly became unavailable. We also saw tremendous resilience from our Chinese e-commerce clients, who maintained steady volumes despite the cost pressures.

The only area where we faced direct market exposure was our scheduled service out of AIFA. For those routes, we rely on our proprietary fuel surcharge mechanism that scales prices dynamically alongside rising fuel costs. The challenge there is that surcharges are billed per kg, meaning if you cannot fill the aircraft, you cannot recover the cash. Fortunately, due to strong demand and our targeted customer mix, we managed to keep load factors high and navigate this incredibly difficult period successfully.

Q: Looking at what mas is flying from China today compared to previous years, how have exchanges with this country varied these years?

A: China has lost significant market share on the trade lanes connecting Asia to the United States and South America due to ongoing tariff pressures and shifting e-commerce dynamics. However, trade always finds a way. If goods cannot be sourced from China, demand simply migrates elsewhere. We are seeing tremendous growth in air freight volumes from alternative manufacturing hubs such as Taiwan, Vietnam, and Thailand.

Air freight inherently thrives on supply chain disruption. When the global environment is stable and predictable, shippers can engineer highly optimized supply chains, moving most of their inventory via ocean freight and using air freight only as a flexible buffer. When stability vanishes, whether due to new tariff announcements or geopolitical conflicts, those optimized models collapse. Companies must react instantly to secure alternative sources, and air freight becomes the immediate solution to bridge the gap. Ironically, the most challenging period for the air freight industry is when the world is completely predictable, while periods of macro crisis often make our services vital.

Our limitation is that our fleet consists of Airbus A330P2F freighters rather than larger aircraft like Boeing 747Fs. With a payload capacity of approximately 60t instead of 110t, our unit costs make it economically challenging to fly directly into far-away Asian markets like Taiwan or Thailand.

Nevertheless, we benefit immensely through an indirect network effect. When global carriers shift their large-capacity aircraft to handle the surging volumes out of Southeast Asia, they reduce their capacity in the regional markets where we operate. The air freight market behaves like water; when capacity shifts in one area, the market levels out globally, allowing us to capture strong yields and steady demand within our primary network.

Q: Given that volatility drives the air freight industry, how do you view the fundamental role of air cargo in the global supply chain?

A: If you analyze global air freight volume, only 20% to 30% of that cargo travels by air by design. These are goods that must go by air due to their inherent nature, such as perishable flowers flying from Ecuador to the United States, high-value electronics, or time-critical e-commerce flows.

The remaining 70% to 80% of global air cargo is what I call "air freight by accident." These shipments were never originally intended to fly. They end up on an aircraft either because market demand suddenly spiked beyond expectations or because a supply chain disruption occurred, such as production delays or quality control issues at the factory.

Air freight is the most expensive mode of transport, but it functions as a stabilizer for global trade. If the world were perfect and every supply chain could be planned flawlessly, air freight volumes would be 70% lower than they are today. Because the world is inherently imperfect, mistakes happen, demand shifts, and companies must react. While individual shippers may experience volatile swings in their shipping needs from month to month, the law of large numbers ensures that across the global economy, the aggregate demand for this stabilization mechanism remains highly consistent.

Q: What are the company’s top priorities to accomplish by the end of 2026?

A: Our absolute priority is establishing and securing our fleet growth plan. The company must expand to fully capture the vast structural opportunities that AIFA offers. Furthermore, scaling our operations is the only effective way to counter rising inflation and protect our baseline economics. Despite the severe delivery delays from Boeing and Airbus, our primary goal is to have a definitive, executable expansion strategy locked in by the end of 2026. The company is stable but achieving this growth blueprint is the critical factor for our future.

Simultaneously, we are moving aggressively on digitalization, particularly through the deployment of AI. In certain markets, our teams receive between 100 and 200 cargo requests per day via email, with every message formatted differently. We are implementing an AI tool that instantly reads these emails, filters out the essential data points, such as weight, piece count, origin, and destination, and generates a complete draft response for our sales team. 

This implementation is saving an immense amount of time, yet we deliberately maintain the human touch. The salesperson reviews every draft, allowing them to adjust pricing strategies or add personal notes for long-standing clients. We are rolling out these highly efficient, remarkably simple AI tools across various departments to ensure our internal productivity matches our geographic ambitions.

Q: Given the intense volatility of recent years, what is the ultimate takeaway for global logistics and supply chain executives navigating this macroeconomic landscape?

A: Every company operates in a unique situation, but the universal lesson is the critical necessity of operational flexibility. What appears stable today can vanish tomorrow. Companies that concentrated all their logistics on a single sourcing destination like China, or relied entirely on a single mode of transport, were left highly exposed when major trade disruptions hit.

The global order has become far more chaotic and unpredictable. It is far wiser to invest in diversifying both your sourcing origins and your transportation modes. Building these redundancies creates vital options for the future. Executives can no longer assume that historical stability will persist; instead, leadership teams must actively anticipate systemic shocks and build supply chains designed to pivot instantly when the unexpected occurs.

mas is a Mexico-based cargo airline that operates scheduled and charter freighter services connecting Latin America, the United States, and Asia. Based at Felipe Ángeles International Airport (NLU), the carrier utilizes an all-Airbus widebody fleet to transport freight for e-commerce, automotive, and technology supply chains across regional and trans-Pacific corridors.