Air cargo revenue management that sells every kilo at what it is worth, with the reason on every published rate
Every kilo sold at what it is worth, with the reason on every published rate.
See one case, screen by screen ↓Air cargo revenue management, also called cargo yield management, decides which shipment flies at which rate: it forecasts demand, balances allotments and overbooking against show-up, and sets rate floors and spot rates by lane. Air Cargo Revenue Management is a cargo revenue management system that puts seven agents on every lane to forecast weight, volume and show-up, read the market, draw a bid-price ladder over each flight and propose each move with its revenue effect and sources; the cargo RM analyst decides and signs.
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Air cargo revenue management decides which kilo flies at which rate. On a network airline, half or more of the belly space is sold ahead to forwarders through hard allotments under block space agreements and soft allotments, forwarders book more than they tender, and the rest is priced from rate floors a cargo RM analyst sets once a week in a spreadsheet and the cargo management system. Capacity changes up to departure with the passenger bag forecast and aircraft swaps, and the rates rarely hear about it.
When a rival cancels a freighter or pharma demand jumps, the floor lags the true bid price. Cheap general cargo books first and fills the flight, high-yield pharma and express are turned away later, soft allotments are released too late to resell, and low-density freight cubes out a hold that still shows weight to sell. Finance sees the revenue a week after departure, and nobody can say why a rate was set.
Estimated split of an analyst's week on one export lane, by hand and with the solution.
Seven specialist agents forecast, read the market and propose every rate move with its evidence; the analyst decides and signs.
Corvane Airways sells the belly space of its widebodies from Chicago O'Hare. On Monday, October 19, its Thursday 777-300ER to London is 71% booked at a floor that no longer matches the market. Here is what happens before the 12:00 rate publish, screen by screen, in the working solution.
The agents worked overnight on 6 lanes and 84 departures. Elena's Today screen shows 8 decisions waiting, 3 due before the 12:00 publish, +$36,600 of forecast revenue in them, and forecast accuracy by weight at 91.0% against a 90% target. The agents' morning brief reads like a conversation, and every line carries a numbered citation she can open.
Market reader, 06:00: “Halvard Air Cargo canceled its Thursday ORD–LHR freighter from Oct 22 to Nov 19. Pharma requests for Thursday rose 18%, and Tessera asked for 2.2 t more.”
She opens ORD–LHR: CV 118, a daily 777-300ER departing 18:40, the week's seven departures as stops on a route line. Over each stands a ladder of 4-tonne rungs with the bid price written on each, booked weight filled solid from the bottom and the forecast still to come hatched above. Thursday sits at a $2.10 floor, $0.35 under the bid price at its load and 7.6 t over capacity; Saturday's $2.05 floor is $0.85 over its bid price.
The Pricing agent's note: “Pharma demand is up 18% after a rival canceled its Thursday freighter. The flight is 71% booked at a $2.10 floor while the bid price at this load is $2.45.”
On the flight screen, capacity after the bag forecast is 24.0 t and 142 m³. Each booking is scored for show-up by forwarder, product and weekday: Brightline Logistics' hard allotment at 96%, Tessera's pharma at 99%, Keystone Freight's soft allotment at 62%. Of 17.0 t booked, 15.0 t is expected; after a 0.5 t buffer there are 8.5 t to sell, against 31.6 t of unconstrained demand.
P-2318 raises the general cargo floor from $2.10 to $2.45 to keep 8.5 t for pharma and express: about +$14,200 on this flight. It turns away 6.4 t of general cargo and shows that 4.9 t of it fits on Friday's CV 118, which is 52% booked. The Checker re-ran the proposal without the Pricing agent's figures and got +$13,900, inside the 5% tolerance.
Asked “Why $2.45?”, the Pricing agent answers: “It is the bid price at the load the flight is on: 16–20 t on the ladder. Below it, a kilo of general cargo displaces pharma worth $5.90.”
Elena asks who gets turned away: Meridian 2.0 t, Polaris 1.6 t, Linden 1.2 t, Brightline 0.9 t and 0.7 t across three others. Claire's note sits on the same proposal — Brightline wants 0.9 t extra on Thursday at $2.38 during the Q4 contract talks.
“Brightline wants 0.9 t extra on Thursday at $2.38 during the Q4 talks.”
At $2.35 Brightline's 0.9 t stays on board and the flight earns about +$12,800 instead of +$14,200. The turned-away weight drops to 5.5 t, 4.9 t of it still fits on Friday, and the Checker agrees at +$12,500. The proposal is marked as edited from $2.45; nothing is published yet.
“I have set the proposal to $2.35 for you to look at; nothing is published.”
Elena signs P-2318 at $2.35 with reason code KA, Key account commitment, and ticks “I have read the sources and the Checker's result.” The move is $0.25 per kg, inside her ±$0.40 limit, so it needs no co-signature; a larger move would go to Tom Reyes, Head of Cargo Pricing.
The Publisher writes the $2.35 general cargo floor for CV 118 Thursday to the cargo management system, reads the rate sheet back to confirm it matches the signed decision, confirms Brightline's 0.9 t at $2.38 and notifies Claire. The decision is logged with its reason code, its 7 sources and Elena's signature.
“Published $2.35 · Elena Marsh · Oct 19 07:47 · KA Key account commitment.”
Keystone Freight holds a 3.0 t soft allotment on Thursdays and has tendered 62% of it over 8 weeks, never more than 2.4 t. P-2319 releases 1.1 t at Tuesday 12:00, inside the 48-hour release clause, so it can be resold to pharma demand: +$3,100, with the Checker at +$3,000. “Ask sales” sends Claire the release with Keystone's record.
Week 42 earned $2,311,000 on the six ORD lanes, $43,000 more than forecast, at a yield of $2.41 per kg with 0.6% of tendered weight offloaded. Of 38 decisions that departed, 29 helped, 6 were even and 3 cost money, for an estimated net +$187,400. The largest cost, a 7% overbooking on ORD–NRT that offloaded 1.2 t, is why the Show-up predictor now proposes 5% on NRT Thursdays.
The same Thursday flight, seen by the five people who carry it — what their week looked like, and what it looks like now.
Seven specialist agents forecast, read the market and propose every rate move with its evidence; the analyst decides and signs.
Forecasts weight and volume demand by flight, product and day before departure, from bookings and quotes in the cargo management system, flown history and the passenger bag forecast.
Scores every booking and allotment for tender probability by forwarder, product and weekday, and proposes overbooking levels and dated soft-allotment releases.
Reads rival schedule filings, the air freight rate index, quote request volume, forwarder email, aircraft changes and events, and links each signal to the flights it touches.
Proposes rate floors and spot rate moves per lane, product and weight band from the bid-price ladder, simulates the revenue effect, who is turned away and where they go, and explains why in one cited sentence.
Re-computes every proposal from raw data without the proposer's figures and shows the difference to the analyst.
After a signature, writes the rate to the cargo management system, reads it back, tells the quote desk and sales, and logs the decision with its reason.
After departure, scores every decision and forecast against flown cargo revenue and proposes retunes where a forecast keeps missing.
Decide every move, co-sign the big ones. The agents propose; a named person decides.
Ask in plain words, or tell the agents what to change. Every answer points to its source, and nothing publishes until a person signs.
Why $2.45?
It is the bid price at the load the flight is on: 16–20 t on the ladder. Below it, a kilo of general cargo displaces pharma worth $5.90. Pharma demand is up 18% since the rival freighter left.
Who gets turned away?
About 6.4 t of general cargo quoted below $2.45: Meridian 2.0 t, Polaris 1.6 t, Linden 1.2 t, Brightline 0.9 t and 0.7 t across three others. 4.9 t of it fits on Friday's CV 118, which is 52% booked.
What happens if I do nothing?
At the 12:00 publish the $2.10 floor stays. General cargo at about $2.13 books first and fills 5.6 t, and about 3.4 t of pharma is turned away: an estimated $14,200 less on one flight.
Which decisions can I bulk-approve?
Three: P-2323, P-2324 and P-2325. Each moves $0.15 per kg or less and the Checker agrees. P-2322 cannot, because the Checker differs.
13 screens from the working solution, on its sample data. Pick one to see it large.
The limits the agents work inside and the rules they never break are settings the Head of Cargo Pricing owns, and every change is on the audit trail.
| Setting | Default | Choose from |
|---|---|---|
| Analyst floor move, per kg | ±$0.40 | Set by the Head of Cargo Pricing; above it, he co-signs |
| Bulk approval, largest move per kg | $0.15 | Only when the Checker agrees |
| Overbooking ceiling | 8% of weight | The Show-up predictor never proposes above it |
| Checker tolerance | 5% of the effect | Outside it, approval is blocked |
| Pharma floor minimum | $4.20 per kg | No proposal goes below it |
| Stop on data older than | 6 hours | Proposals and publishing pause on stale feeds |
| Soft allotment releases | 48 hours or more before departure | Rule on or off; hard allotments are never released |
| Rate publish and clocks | 12:00 Central | Reminder 11:00 · escalation 11:30 to the Head of Cargo Pricing |
Every figure is labelled: a target the solution is built to, an estimate, a typical published result, or a proven one.
“demo” = seen in the working solution, on its sample airline data · “target” = the design goal, measured in the live solution · “estimated” = our estimate (the split of an analyst's week) · “typical” = published figures (IATA — 2025 airline cargo revenue about $142 billion, down 4.7%; WorldACD via Air Cargo Week, 2023 — pharma and temperature-controlled yields about $3.93 per kg against $2.21 for general cargo on a transatlantic lane). The 2–3% revenue target is in line with RM vendors' published uplift claims. Corvane Airways, its rivals, forwarders, flights and the people named on this page are fictional — characters and sample data in the working solution.
Air cargo revenue management, also called cargo yield management, decides which shipment flies at which rate: it forecasts demand, balances allotments and overbooking against show-up, and sets rate floors and spot rates by lane. Air Cargo Revenue Management is a cargo revenue management system that puts seven agents on every lane to forecast weight, volume and show-up, read the market, draw a bid-price ladder over each flight and propose each move with its revenue effect and sources; the cargo RM analyst decides and signs.
Forwarders book more than they tender, so a flight is overbooked against the weight expected to show up. The Show-up predictor scores each booking and allotment by forwarder, product and weekday for its own show-up rate rather than a flight average — on the sample flight, 15.0 t of 17.0 t booked — and never proposes overbooking above the 8% ceiling.
The bid price is the lowest rate worth accepting for the next kilo at the flight's current load. Each departure carries a ladder of weight bands with the bid price on each rung and the published floor marked against it, so the analyst sees at a glance where a floor sits below what the next kilo is worth.
When a forwarder keeps tendering short of a soft allotment, early enough to resell the space. On the sample lane Keystone Freight tendered 62% of its Thursday allotment over 8 weeks, so the Show-up predictor proposes releasing 1.1 t inside the 48-hour release clause, in time to resell it. Hard allotments are never released.
Yes. Weight and volume are forecast separately, and a flight that fills by volume before weight gets its own proposal. On the sample, 6 of 11 bookings on CV 86 to Frankfurt are low-density e-commerce at 94 kg per m³, below the 167 kg per m³ chargeable-weight line; after an aircraft swap the Pricing agent proposes a volume rate, from $1.95 to $2.30.
No. The Market reader uses public schedule filings, rate indexes, quote request volume and forwarder email only, never a rival's private rates, and rates are set independently.
No. The agents propose air cargo dynamic pricing moves and never publish. The analyst approves, edits or rejects every move with a reason code, the Head of Cargo Pricing co-signs above the analyst's limit, the Checker blocks a proposal it disagrees with, and the Publisher writes only signed rates and reads them back.
The Agentic Solution Engine builds and deploys it from your requirements and documents — your pricing policy, contracts and a sample of bookings, allotments and flown revenue — and it goes live once every quality gate has passed. First-time setup replays 12 weeks of history before any lane is switched on.
Spot quotes in minutes, priced to the rule and the space on the flight.
1-min demoAir Waybill Data ValidationEvery waybill right before acceptance: fewer holds, and the bill matches the freight.
1-min demoDangerous Goods Acceptance CheckEvery Shipper's Declaration checked against the current DGR before a person signs.
1-min demoWe'll run Air Cargo Revenue Management on a sample of your own bookings, allotments and flown revenue.