Cargo airlines will face a shortage of widebody freighter capacity for the next decade and beyond, according to Atlas Air's chief executive officer Michael Steen.

As reported by Air Cargo News, Steen believes the growth of widebody freighter capacity will struggle to keep pace with demand growth, as airlines need to retire older aircraft while there is a lack of new freighters entering the market.

“So, the global freighter fleet is now ageing and we are seeing a situation here that we haven’t seen before, where aircraft are retiring faster than they are being replenished,” Steen, who has been warning about the impending shortages for years, said.

Moreover, with Boeing ending the production of the B777-200F in 2027, and deliveries of the next generation B777-8F and A350F not starting until late 2027 or early 2028, barring any production timeline delays, “this means you have at least one calendar year with zero new freighters,” said Steen.

“When you look at all this and put it together, we are going to be capacity-constrained well towards the 2040s, and there is structurally no way around it from a capacity perspective,” Steen concluded.