India’s air cargo industry is optimistic about its immediate and long-term futures, despite some recent turbulence, its leaders said during the recent Air Cargo India in Mumbai.
One of the best illustrations of this is how seasoned industry professionals now believe, sometimes with a degree of breeziness, that the target of 10 million tons moved annually by 2030 is now more than possible. Currently the industry moves around 4 million each year.
“I’m ready for that to happen,” said Ramesh Mamidala, head of cargo at Air India, at the opening session.
Driving this is India’s emergence as an exporting power in key sectors such as pharma, perishables and electronics, all before a booming ecommerce sector is even mentioned. Giving it force is the huge amount of new capacity that is becoming available.
Air India alone has some 600 aircraft on order and, in a telling moment, Mamidala corrected someone who referred to its 570 planes on order, joking it had ordered another 30 at the end of January. One challenge in 2025 had been a long pause in the supply of planes, said Mamidala, although it had resumed a few weeks ago. “There is so much capacity coming our way,” he added later.
Those with planes already are aiming to build their profile. “We are growing further,” said Badr Abbas, divisional senior vice president at Emirates SkyCargo, adding that Emirates is putting two new freighters into India, one to Mumbai and the other to Ahmedabad.
“India is foundational,” he added, signalling a change not just in India’s fortunes but in world trade patterns.
This all brings with it some challenges, but filling planes and bellyhold is not one of them. The question is, as Girish Nair, COO of Kempegowda International Airport in Bengaluru put it, how to stay ahead of the demand curve.
“We need to improve on the ground handling,” said Yashpal Sharma, chair and managing director of Skyways Group. He pointed out that there are vulnerabilities for air cargo, including that the entire Indian transport ecosystem is reliant on road and the railways, “[which] will catch up faster than we think.”
There is truth to this. Railways are already established, nationwide, and are moving to being high speed so a challenge to the large domestic cargo market. It’s not the big cities where the market might ebb, even for the big players, but elsewhere. “I’m not concerned with metro-to-metro,” Mamidala said. “Non metro is where I am concerned.”
Helping here are government plans to open some 50 or so new airport facilities. Most recent to get approval was the Civil Enclave at Srinagar International Airport. “Enhanced connectivity will also facilitate exports of high-value regional products such as apples, saffron, handicrafts, hand-knotted carpets, dry fruits and horticultural produce,” said a government press release.
More telling still is what civil aviation minister Kinjarapu Ram Mohan Naidu pointed out: on average, every 45 days, a new airport has been opened under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s leadership. The target is for 350 airports.
Supplementing this a lot of investment being done at airports both in India and beyond to deal with the expected new volumes. “We are investing a lot,” said Nair, pointing to the Bengaluru airport’s second logistics park. Abu Dhabi’s new cargo terminal is being with India largely in mind, and shows one detail of how the world is changing.
The other concern is in the realm of losing business and waiting because policy and procedures aren’t yet ready. Lacking a proper transhipment policy, India cannot develop the market for it because it doesn’t have smooth and seamless movement. “We don’t have that,” said Mamidala, adding that the lack of a transhipment policy makes Air India less competitive.
Change is very much in the air, though. “I propose many measures for custom processes to have minimal intervention for smoother and faster movement of goods and greater certainty to the trade,” said Nirmala Sitharaman, India’s Minister of Finance, while outlining the February 1, 2026, budget.
Sitharaman listed moves to trust-based customs systems and greater facilitation for authorized and compliant importers to enable faster clearance and reduced transaction costs.
“Regular importers with trusted longstanding supply chains will be recognized in the risk system, so that the need for verification of their cargo every time can be minimized. Export cargo using electronic sealing will be provided through clearance from the factory premises to the ship,” she said.
For imports filing a bill of entry by a trusted importer, arrival of goods will automatically notify Customs for completing their clearance formalities. Customs warehousing will be transformed into a warehouse operator-centric system with self-declarations, electronic tracking and risk-based audit.
“These reforms will move away from the current system of officer-dependent approvals, and reduce transaction delays and compliance costs,” said Sitharaman.
Perhaps the business change in the offing is that the approvals required for cargo clearance from various government agencies will be seamlessly processed through a single and interconnected digital window by the end of the financial year.
Overhanging this is the increased complexity of global trade and cargo especially with tariffs and the frontloading the latest White House outburst can trigger for inventory.
“Volatility is the new baseline,” said Fabio Acerbi, head of regional air product IMEA at A.P. Moller-Maersk, who urged the sector to build the necessary flexibility and think multimodally if need be. Volatility is caused in part by AI which is also one possible way to smooth some of the upcoming problems. It might also allow huge benefits and gains to be locked in.
“Utilization of non-intrusive scanning with advanced imaging and AI technology for risk assessment will be expanded in a phased manner with the objective to scan every container across all the major ports,” said Sitharaman.
By Michael Mackey
Correspondent | Mumbai