Freight in Flight: How Air Cargo at CLT Delivers Essentials

When you think about the Airport, it’s easy to focus on your suitcase and vacation plans, but cargo is everywhere—probably even below the passenger cabin where you’re seated.

In 2024, Charlotte Douglas International Airport (CLT) handled 205,700 tons of cargo, a 7.3% increase from the previous year. In the first seven months of 2025, those numbers rose by 14.1%.

Air cargo supports just about everything in our daily lives. That prescription your doctor just sent over? It might have flown in overnight. The part your mechanic needs to get your car back on the road? That too. Even things like event gear, rescue animals or time-sensitive mail often arrive by air.

In this edition of CLTea’s “Five on the Fly,” Alishia Nugent, CLT Cargo Properties Leasing Coordinator, joined us for five questions:

1) Who ships the most in Charlotte?

Amazon is currently our most active operator, handling about 60,000 tons in FY25, although FedEx was our leader for several years. Our FY25 data shows UPS and FedEx each handling between 35 and 40,000 tons. Prime Air Photo: Courtesy of James Greer https://www.instagram.com/thejamesgreer/

What is being shipped is just about anything you can imagine! When you track a package from Amazon, UPS, or FedEx and see that it arrived in Charlotte overnight, chances are it touched down right here on our cargo ramp.

Note: American Airlines' biggest cargo customer is the United States Postal Service.

2) What is the longest distance our cargo travels to CLT?

Our dedicated cargo flights usually stick to shorter, high-frequency routes. For example, Amazon runs six flights daily—three inbound and three outbound—connecting CLT with Cincinnati (CVG), Wilmington, OH (ILN) and San Bernardino, CA (SBD). Of those, San Bernardino is the farthest, but even that’s under five hours of flight time.

That said, most people don’t realize how much cargo is carried in the belly of passenger flights. In 2024, American Airlines transported 21 thousand tons (42 million pounds!). Anything from high-value packages and mail to medicine and even family pets can be riding in the belly of a mainline aircraft. Regional jets usually don’t have room for that kind of freight, but our mainline flights do.

For a long time, Munich was our longest nonstop route, at about 4,590 miles. American Airlines launched the seasonal Athens route (June 2025), which added about 1,000 more miles, making it our longest haul. But next year (May 2026), we will surpass that with Etihad’s new nonstop to Abu Dhabi. That flight will cover over 7,400 miles and significantly expand CLT’s global reach. It will be exciting to see the changes that come with this.

3) Can you explain how cargo fits into the larger picture of CLT’s success?

Cargo tends to be the much quieter and less glorified partner to passenger service, but it’s just as important. It helps ensure airline profitability, especially on long-haul routes, and helps keep Charlotte connected to major logistics and distribution networks.

Amazon alone operates over 40 flights a week through CLT, quietly making it one of our top-performing carriers, even without a single passenger onboard. While cargo might not be as exciting as terminal expansions or the latest restaurant to open, it offers a lot of potential, especially considering how the Airport can stay resilient and diversified in the long run. We saw the important role of cargo during the pandemic; passenger traffic dropped off, but cargo kept moving.

We’re also well-positioned geographically to expand, especially with inbound goods from South America. Think tropical fruit, fresh flowers, produce and pharmaceuticals — this kind of freight needs to move quickly, and CLT is in a prime spot to serve as a gateway for it.

4) Discuss how our love of convenient, online shopping impacts CLT.

E-commerce is BOOMING and only continuing to grow! People have become very reliant on their next-day or even same-day shipping now, and companies like Amazon Air are the ones making that happen. CLT plays a big role in their network, which means we’re helping ensure those deliveries arrive on time, not just across the country but right here in Charlotte to you and me.

And it’s not just Amazon. Retailers like Shein, Temu, and others are part of this extensive global logistics ecosystem that’s growing so rapidly. The more prepared we are to handle that growth, the more competitive we will be as a destination for these operators.

5) Are there any new technologies on the horizon you are excited about?

We haven’t rolled out much new cargo-specific tech here at CLT yet, but I watch it closely. Other airports are testing some exciting things, like autonomous ground service equipment, which is basically self-driving tugs that move freight around the ramp.

One of the innovations I’m most excited about is the scanning technology now used in some warehouses. Instead of having to manually flip every box to find a barcode, these systems can scan any side of a parcel automatically. That kind of efficiency is a game-changer when you’re moving thousands of packages an hour and can enable a much larger throughput within the same amount of space.