Digitization was the warm-up.
Orchestration is the main event.
By 2026, booking air cargo digitally isn’t impressive. It’s expected. Acceptance rates are up. Cancellations are down. APIs are faster. The pipes work.
Now the pressure has shifted.
Because forwarders aren’t just booking more digitally – they’re booking more strategically.
And that changes everything.
The Great Diversification
Between 2021 and 2026, the average forwarder expanded their active carrier pool by as much as 180%.
That’s not incremental growth. That’s structural diversification.
Europe moved fastest. In Germany, the average largest share of bookings per forwarder flowing to a single carrier dropped from 46% to 17%. In Spain, from 60% to 31%.
The U.S. is still more concentrated – forwarders still book around 47% of volume on average with a primary partner – but even there, dependence is loosening.
Fragmentation isn’t chaos, it’s insurance.
Forwarders are building resilience against volatility, disruption, and rate swings that now happen hundreds of times per month.
But diversification introduces a new problem:
More choice means more complexity.
And complexity demands orchestration.
The Real-Time Problem
Here’s the tension.
Top dynamic carriers now adjust spot rates on key lanes 500+ times per month.
Forwarders are juggling:
- Spot
- Contracts
- BSAs
- Allotments
- Special services
- Mode shifts
Customers expect instant quotes. Not “let me check and revert.”
If your contract rates live in one system, your spot rates in another, your trucking leg in a spreadsheet, and your ocean option in someone’s inbox…
You don’t have digitization.
You have digital clutter.
Welcome to the browser tab nightmare.
Orchestration: Where Interlining Changes the Game
This is where digital interlining stops being “nice to have” and becomes strategic.
Because real-time forwarders don’t think in single-carrier lanes.
They think in solutions.
Digital interlining allows a shipment to be booked end-to-end – across multiple airlines – on a single AWB, with instant confirmation across segments.
That may sound obvious on the passenger side. But in cargo, it’s transformative.
Traditionally, interlining meant:
- Email threads
- Manual FFRs
- Time zone delays
- Days waiting for confirmation
- No real-time capacity visibility
- Manual tracking after departure
As Ilja Seliverstovs, VP Cargo at airBaltic, put it:
We are unable to see our partners’ available capacity and must correspond via email. Space is manually confirmed and, due to time zone differences, confirmation can take days, not hours.
Days.
In a market that reprices hourly, digital interlining flips that model.
Instant confirmation. Cross-carrier routing in one flow. Full track and trace visibility.
And the scale shift is enormous.
Even the largest airlines can cover roughly 120,000 city-pair combinations on their own.
With digital cross-carrier routing?
That number jumps into the millions – exceeding 12 million possible routes when networks are stitched together.
That’s not incremental reach. That’s exponential expansion.
Why Airlines Are Leaning In
This isn’t theoretical.
Airlines see interlining as a revenue lever.
Faisal Karamat, VP Cargo Customer Experience at Qatar Airways Cargo, explains it clearly:
Marketplace platforms have revolutionized the booking process and magnified our sales efforts across our global network.
He’s blunt about the reality:
There is so much latent, underutilized capacity, but the related booking process has remained manual for most players.
Digital interlining doesn’t just expand the buying carrier’s network. It fills the selling carrier’s empty space. It creates incremental revenue that otherwise wouldn’t materialize – while giving forwarders more routing flexibility and faster confirmations.
As IAG Cargo’s Giulia Pedone puts it:
Interline is a significant lever to expanding the existing network…offering customers greater reach and flexibility compared to airlines that operate in isolation.
Isolation doesn’t win in 2026.
Connectivity does.
Contracts, Spot, and Mode – Unified
Interlining is only part of orchestration.
The real-time forwarder sees all capacity types in one view:
Forwarders don’t think in silos. Neither should their systems.
Customers don’t ask, “Is this under a BSA or spot?” They ask, “Can you move it at this price, at this speed?”
The real-time forwarder answers with data – not with inbox tennis.
And orchestration doesn’t eliminate the human.
It amplifies them.
As the hybrid forwarder philosophy puts it:
You can automate the 80% that’s routine. That leaves more time for the 20% that really needs you.
Technology connects. People solve.
From Digital Access to Unified Networks
The last five years proved digital booking works.
The next five will prove whether companies can coordinate complexity without slowing down.
The forwarders gaining share now:
They are more analytical and more dynamic.
They don’t manage freight like a static rate sheet, they manage it like a marketplace.
The Bottom Line
Diversification is here.
Fragmentation is here.
Volatility is permanent.
The competitive edge no longer belongs to the carrier with the biggest standalone network.
It belongs to the forwarder – and the airline – that can orchestrate across networks in real time.
Interline instantly.
Switch modes seamlessly.
Blend contract and spot intelligently.
Price dynamically.
Confirm immediately.
The infrastructure is here. The leaders of 2026 will be those who stop managing freight like it’s still 2019.
