Scheduled Air Freight — Monthly Producer Price Index
What US airlines charge to fly freight on scheduled flights: the Bureau of Labor Statistics producer price index for scheduled freight air transportation.
Official statisticSource figures as of October 17, 2026Sources & methods
- Period covered
- Dec 2003 – Sep 2026
- Source figures as of
- October 17, 2026
- Geography
- United States
- Sector
- Transportation, Maritime Trade & Logistics · Air cargo
- Seasonal adjustment
- Not seasonally adjusted
- Transformations
- Views other than the level (changes, averages, volatility) are calculated by CK Economics from these figures
- Revisions
- Replaced with the source’s latest figures whenever it revises them.
- Data status
- Provisional
- Limitations
- Figures from Jun 2026 on are preliminary at the source. Seasonal swings are left in: compare a period with the same period a year earlier.
No projectionIn backtests at 40 past dates, a statistical projection (exponential smoothing, damped trend) was not clearly better than a no-change forecast: its errors over the next 3 months were 6% larger, short of the 5% improvement needed, so none is shown. How we decide
Key figures
CK estimateIndex (Dec 2003=100) · calculated by CK Economics from U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data
- Latest · Sep 2026
- 181.8
- +5.8% vs a year earlier1
- 5-year change
- +9.7%
- since Sep 2021, +1.9% a year2
- 10-year change
- +22.2%
- since Sep 2016, +2.0% a year2
- Record high
- 204.2
- May 20263
- Record low
- 97.5
- Apr 2004 (and 1 other period)3
- Where the latest ranks
- 95th pct.
- Higher than 95% of the other 273 observations since Dec 20034
- 1Latest observation against the observation one year earlier (for weekly data, the nearest within three days).
- 2Latest observation against the observation five and ten years earlier; the yearly rate is the compound annual growth rate over the span.
- 3Highest and lowest published observations across the full history shown.
- 4Share of the other published observations that are lower than the latest one, rounded down.
Seasonal pattern
CK estimateEach month of 2026 and 2025 against the average and range of the same month in 2021–2025. Calculated by CK Economics from the published series.
Methodology
The index covers scheduled freight air transportation (NAICS 481112): air cargo carried by US carriers on scheduled flights, domestic and international. A producer price index measures the change over time in the prices that domestic producers receive for their output, here what carriers charge to move freight. BLS publishes it about two weeks after the month ends and revises the latest four months, which are marked preliminary, once more price reports arrive. Values come from the FRED copy of the BLS series and are cross-checked against the BLS Public Data API for the latest two years. Index levels are not seasonally adjusted. The base month, Dec 2003, equals 100. Projection: none. CK Economics backtests a statistical projection of this series (exponential smoothing with a damped trend) by refitting it at past dates and scoring its forecasts against what happened. Its errors over the next three months were not at least 5% smaller than those of the better of a no-change forecast and repeating the same month a year earlier, so no projection is shown.
Source
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Producer Price Index by Industry (PCU481112481112), not seasonally adjusted, via FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis: https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/PCU481112481112 and https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PCU481112481112 — figures as published on 17 October 2026.
All data
| Period | Value | Change y/y |
|---|---|---|
| Sep 2026 | 181.8 | +5.8% |
| Aug 2026 | 185.3 | +8.2% |
| Jul 2026 | 176.3 | +1.5% |
| Jun 2026 | 202 | +20.7% |
| May 2026 | 204.2 | +23.3% |
| Apr 2026 | 194.8 | +13.4% |
| Mar 2026 | 174.7 | +3.4% |
| Feb 2026 | 175.1 | +3.7% |
| Jan 2026 | 176.8 | +3.9% |
| Dec 2025 | 177.9 | +3.0% |
| Nov 2025 | 172.7 | +1.2% |
| Oct 2025 | 173.6 | +2.8% |
| Sep 2025 | 171.8 | +4.9% |
| Aug 2025 | 171.3 | +6.1% |
| Jul 2025 | 173.8 | +3.9% |
| Jun 2025 | 167.3 | +1.6% |
| May 2025 | 165.6 | +0.3% |
| Apr 2025 | 171.8 | +3.0% |
| Mar 2025 | 168.9 | +2.1% |
| Feb 2025 | 168.9 | −0.3% |
| Jan 2025 | 170.2 | +0.6% |
| Dec 2024 | 172.8 | −2.5% |
| Nov 2024 | 170.6 | −4.3% |
| Oct 2024 | 168.8 | −4.8% |