NextFin News - The airfreight industry, long lampooned as a paper-bound relic of the 20th century, has reached a digital tipping point that challenges its "stick-in-the-mud" reputation. As of April 2026, the sector has transitioned from a fragmented ecosystem of phone calls and manual manifests to one where automated platforms handle nearly a third of bookings in major markets like France. This shift is not merely a matter of replacing paper with PDFs, but a fundamental re-engineering of logistics through "AI Agents" capable of conducting complex sales and customer service functions with human-like context.
Matt Petot, Chief Executive of the online platform CargoAi, argues that the industry’s perceived technological lethargy is now an outdated narrative. Petot, who transitioned from traditional freight forwarding at Schenker and Air France KLM to the tech-centric environment of Dyson before founding CargoAi, brings a perspective shaped by external supply chain standards. His firm now connects 105 airlines with 27,000 forwarders, providing a level of price transparency and booking speed that was virtually non-existent a decade ago. According to Petot, the primary barrier to digitalization was never the complexity of the supply chain, but a lack of "external points of view" within a closed ecosystem of industry veterans.
The current technological leap is defined by the move from simple machine learning—predicting rates based on load factors—to generative AI agents. These digital entities are now capable of managing email packing lists and even conducting phone conversations with customers to confirm flight details or explain "chargeable weight" concepts. Petot notes that while older generations may find the idea of a "bot" salesperson unsettling, the efficiency gains are undeniable. CargoAi recently onboarded an entire airline to its digital system in just two weeks, a process that previously required six months and a team of ten specialists. This "plug and play" reality has effectively removed the traditional excuses of high costs and management time that laggards once used to delay modernization.
However, Petot’s bullish stance on the "Information Age" of airfreight is not yet a universal market consensus. While CargoAi’s data shows significant penetration, a segment of the industry remains tethered to legacy systems. These "automation laggards" face a narrowing window for survival as digital-first forwarders gain the ability to alert customers to missed bookings or delays in real-time—actions that manual operators often only discover after the fact. The risk for the industry is a widening "digital divide" where smaller players are priced out of the sophisticated AI tools required to compete with tech-enabled giants.
The human element remains the most significant variable in this digital transition. Despite fears of mass redundancies, the airfreight sector continues to struggle with chronic recruitment shortages. Petot suggests that AI will not replace the workforce but will instead strip away the "repetitive, unrewarding drudgery" of back-office functions. This allows human staff to focus on high-value tasks, such as negotiating rates for oversized or delicate shipments where a "personal touch" is still preferred. The industry’s future appears to be one of hybrid intelligence, where the machine handles the data-heavy logistics while humans manage the strategic relationships.
The rapid adoption of these technologies suggests that the airfreight industry has finally moved past its experimental phase. The focus has shifted from whether to digitize to how quickly AI can be integrated into the daily workflow. For an industry that once measured progress in decades, the current pace of change—where a year’s delay can result in permanent obsolescence—marks a definitive entry into the Information Age.
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