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Air Canada and Avianca set course for network alignment

Air Canada (AC) and Avianca are looking to develop a strategic partnership to leverage their combined networks, both for cargo and passenger operations. For the North American carrier this augurs better access to South American markets, while Avianca is looking to more avenues to link its markets with Europe and Asia. The Canadian airline and Abra Group, which controls both Avianca and GOL, have signed a joint business agreement to pursue commercial integration. The primary focus is on the passenger business, but both sides stressed their ambitions for collaboration in cargo, unlike typical partnership agreements between passenger airlines. "Building from a highly complementary presence across the Americas, this memorandum of understanding between our world-class airlines creates a pathway to further bolster our partnership, improve customer experience, and enhance global connectivity," said Mark Galardo, EVP, CCO, and president of cargo at Air Canada. On the cargo side, the pair have an interline agreement - one of many for both carriers. Matthieu Casey, AC's MD commercial, cargo, described their current arrangement as good, but added that it had not been "as active as it could have been". "This agreement puts more focus on the possibilities this relationship can offer," he said. Avianca has, arguably, been the more proactive of the two in its pursuit of airline partnerships. An agreement with Turkish Airlines in late 2025 introduced a B777 freighter from Istanbul via Liege to Miami, where it connects with Avianca for onward service to South America. The Latin carrier uses the flight's eastbound capacity across the Atlantic to serve European markets; In a similar vein, Avianca uses the northbound lift on Amazon's freighter flights from Miami to Bogota and Quito. For AC Cargo, Latin America has been a growing market for its intercontinental flows across the Pacific and the Atlantic. Given the limitations of its domestic market, the airline has a long-established focus on intercontinental volumes transiting Canada to and from points in the Americas, primarily in the US. With the uncertainty over Canada-US trade, other points in the Americas have become more of a target for AC's intercontinental flows. Mr Casey emphasised the complementary networks of the two carriers, rather than individual markets and routes. For AC, the partnership is about creating a more extensive Latin America network to offer clients, he said. Miami, Bogota, and San Jose are the three natural major connection points for the pair to exchange traffic, he said, adding that both carriers operate passenger service as well as freighters to Miami. At this point, the partnership focuses on their bellyhold capacity, so talks about linking freighters should enter the alliance further down the road. Specifically for cargo, the agreement mentions the alignment of ramp services at airports and the integration of belly cargo flows. Not surprisingly, there has been no reference in the agreement to GOL, given its focus on domestic operations within Brazil with narrowbody aircraft. On the other hand, the low-cost carrier runs a domestic cargo network with B737 freighters, and it started widebody passenger flights this month with a leased A330 between Rio de Janeiro and New York. The partnership agreement allows for revenue sharing and deeper commercial integration, but this will have to wait until a binding agreement the partners favour obtains regulatory approval. According to the partnership announcement, commercial integration would include expanded codeshare arrangements. Again, this will have to wait, at least on the cargo side. "It's too early to talk about codeshare," Mr Casey said.

Delta raises Q2 cargo revenue with higher volumes

Delta Airlines' cargo revenue increased 39% in its second (June) quarter which the airline attributed to volume growth as it seeks expansion in Asia and the Middle East. For the three months ended 30 June, Delta recorded cargo operating revenue of $294m, up from $212m in the same period last year. The airline also fared well in the first quarter of 2026 with a 9% year on year rise in cargo operating revenue to $226m. Joe Esposito, Delta's executive vice president & chief commercial officer said in the airline's second quarter earnings call on 10 July that most of the cargo revenue growth was due to volume increases, adding that the airline had benefited from the rerouting of cargo away from the Middle East and expansion in Asia. Although airlines faced the challenge of higher jet fuel prices, following the start of the Middle East conflict there was a shift towards non-stop flights between Asia-Europe, and Asia-North America and carriers flying on these trade lanes benefitted from shipper demand. "Most of what we saw for cargo revenue - it was a great quarter. We're really proud of the team - was on volume. "And you've had some rerouting of cargo that typically goes through the Middle East and other areas that we've been able to recapture. "But it's also the structural improvements we've made internally which, depending on where we're expanding, Asia is one of the largest cargo markets from the US, and we've been expanding in the Asian market. "We've been getting greater capability of our airplanes that we've been investing in. And we've got a lot of internal restructuring on how we approach cargoes and made it much more of a priority." On the subject of whether Delta expected to continue seeing cargo revenue growth in the second half of the year, Esposito added: "So, we will see strength throughout the year in cargo, probably not the 39%, but we're going to have a really strong back half in our cargo sector. "And that'll play a bigger role as we continue to invest in international. Cargo is a big part of international and goes towards the profitability of our international entities." More specifically, Delta expects that most of its international growth is "going to be (in) Asia and Middle East", confirmed Esposito.

Analysis: Expeditors - fiduciary duty is not a crime scene

(Editor's note: this is Lawrence Lim's debut for Premium as senior columnist. Lawrence is an investment professional at private equity firm EmergeVest, owner of EV Cargo. More details about Lawrence can be found at the bottom of this column.) Key takeaway: Adam Clermont has built an impressive corpus documenting Expeditors' layoffs, and I don't doubt the pain behind it. But sympathy for the laid-off and a sound financial theory are two different things, and several of the theories built on ...