Vol. I, No. 36 · San Francisco — Friday, September 11, 2026 · Price: shipped standby, belly hold only

BY MEL ADLER, COMMERCE DESK

In 2000, Federal Express landed more cargo at San Francisco International than any other airline, 133.9 million pounds of freight in a single year, almost all of it off planes built to carry nothing but boxes. Federal Express still flies into SFO. It now carries about a fifth of that.

The airport’s whole freighter business has followed FedEx down. San Francisco International’s dedicated cargo planes carried 666.4 million pounds of freight in 2000, the busiest year in the airport’s cargo records, which begin in mid-1999. By 2025 that had fallen to 241.1 million pounds, a drop of 64 percent. SFO’s total air-cargo tonnage fell too, but only by 37 percent over the same quarter-century. The freight that did not disappear moved into the belly holds of ordinary passenger jets. They now carry four-fifths of everything that flies as cargo through the airport, up from about two-thirds in 2000. A shipment that once needed a plane built only to carry boxes now more often rides for free beneath paying passengers’ luggage.

Twenty-one airlines flew dedicated freighters into SFO in 2000. Twelve did in 2025. Federal Express, the airport’s biggest cargo carrier that year, has fallen into a virtual tie for second place with ABX Air, 412,000 pounds apart on tonnage in the tens of millions, its own freighter tonnage down 78 percent to 30.0 million pounds. The airline that now moves the most freighter cargo through SFO is Air Transport International, a charter carrier that flies contract routes for other companies’ branded freight networks rather than under its own name. It carried 92.1 million pounds in 2025, more than triple Federal Express’s total.

On the passenger side, one airline now dominates. United Airlines carried 456.2 million pounds of freight in the belly holds of its scheduled flights in 2025, 48 percent of every pound SFO’s passenger jets carried that year. The next-largest passenger carrier, EVA Airways, carried 55.4 million pounds, 12 percent of United’s total. United’s share follows from its own SFO hub. The airline flies more long-haul widebody routes out of the airport than any competitor, and a widebody’s hold is large enough to carry freight alongside checked bags without displacing a single passenger.

The one year freighters gained ground was 2020. Passenger flights had been grounded, and the belly holds that now carry most of SFO’s freight went empty with them. Dedicated freighters filled part of that gap. Their share of the airport’s cargo jumped to 39 percent that year, the highest since 2008, before the decline resumed. A third aircraft type, the half-passenger, half-cargo combi jet, carried 53.2 million pounds of SFO freight in 2002, its peak year. It has not carried a pound since 2016.

Confidence is high on the counts themselves. The Airport Commission publishes cargo weight by airline and aircraft type every month, and this desk’s own sums for 2000 and 2025 match the file’s totals exactly. The read is softer on why. Whether shippers moved to belly cargo because it is cheaper, because e-commerce favors speed over bulk, or because airlines simply added more passenger widebodies is not something this file can answer.

Twenty-six years ago, a plane that flew nothing but boxes was the ordinary way to move freight out of San Francisco. Now it is the exception, riding under someone else’s suitcase.