Air Freight & Logistics Data: Cargo Tonnage, Trade Lanes, Rate Indices and Flight-Level Movement · Head-to-head
ACI World Data Centre - Airport Traffic Statistics vs Eurostat – Air Transport by Aircraft and Airline (AVIA_GOEXAC / AVIA_TF series)
Which air freight & logistics data: cargo tonnage, trade lanes, rate indices and flight-level movement data fits your job: ACI World Data Centre - Airport Traffic Statistics, or Eurostat – Air Transport by Aircraft and Airline. API, files, or your warehouse. Daily, weekly, or hourly.
ACI World Data Centre - Airport Traffic Statistics
Eurostat – Air Transport by Aircraft and Airline (AVIA_GOEXAC / AVIA_TF series)
Coverage, side by side
| ACI World Data Centre - Airport Traffic Statistics | Eurostat – Air Transport by Aircraft and Airline | |
|---|---|---|
| Geographic | Global - 2,600+ airports in 180+ countries annually; roughly 1,200 airports in the monthly collection; dashboards span up to 95% of commercial traffic | EU/EFTA/candidate reporting countries at main-airport level (about 1,130 coded airports) against roughly 200 partner countries and regions |
| Temporal | Annual dataset with monthly collection beneath it; 2024-versus-2019 benchmark comparisons; forecast product extending 2025-2054 across 100+ countries | 1993 through 2026-Q2, with pre-2008 partner detail preserved in companion history tables |
What each contains
Pick by fit, not by loyalty.
| ACI World Data Centre - Airport Traffic Statistics | Eurostat – Air Transport by Aircraft and Airline | |
|---|---|---|
| Publisher | Airports Council International (ACI World) | Eurostat (European Commission statistical office) |
| Subject lens | Airport-level traffic scoreboard: passengers, air cargo and mail, aircraft movements, with global rankings | — |
| Geographic coverage | Global - 2,600+ airports in 180+ countries annually; roughly 1,200 airports in the monthly collection; dashboards span up to 95% of commercial traffic | EU/EFTA/candidate reporting countries at main-airport level (about 1,130 coded airports) against roughly 200 partner countries and regions |
| Temporal coverage | Annual dataset with monthly collection beneath it; 2024-versus-2019 benchmark comparisons; forecast product extending 2025-2054 across 100+ countries | 1993 through 2026-Q2, with pre-2008 partner detail preserved in companion history tables |
| Detail level | One row per airport per metric per period, with rank and year-over-year change attached | Series keyed by frequency x unit x traffic measure x reporting airport x partner entity x period |
| Formats | Excel datasets, interactive dashboards, PDF reports | Tabular extracts in TSV, CSV, XLSX and XML layouts |
| Scale | Three metric families across 2,600+ airports; KPI module drawing on 1,060 airports | 10,794,784 observations in the core extra-EU freight table |
| Best for | League tables, hub benchmarking, global network sizing | Corridor analysis, partner-country trade shares, carrier-mix questions |
What each does better
ACI World Data Centre - Airport Traffic Statistics
The global league table nobody else assembles at this width. Verified 2025 cargo leadership reads Hong Kong 5,066,345 tonnes (+2.7 percent), Shanghai Pudong 4,091,941 (+8.3 percent), Anchorage 3,854,614 (+4.2 percent), Louisville 3,396,437 (+13.5 percent), Miami 3,128,165 (+13.6 percent) - against roughly 131 million tonnes moving worldwide. Every figure ships with its rank and its year-over-year change already computed, so a league table is a filter, not a build. See airport traffic statistics for how these rankings are used.
Three traffic families on one consistent schema. Passengers with transit counted once, cargo with baggage, trucked and transit freight explicitly excluded (the Anchorage exception documented rather than hidden), movements split into air transport versus general aviation. That discipline is what makes cross-country hub comparison defensible.
Breadth with a forecast attached. More than 2,600 airports across 180-plus countries in the annual layer, up to 95 percent of commercial traffic in the dashboard layer, KPIs drawing on 1,060 airports, and an outlook extending to 2054 - the only record in this pairing that tells you where the traffic is heading rather than only where it has been.
Eurostat – Air Transport by Aircraft and Airline
Corridor resolution. ACI tells you Frankfurt moved cargo; Eurostat tells you Frankfurt-to-China moved 374,920 tonnes in 2019, dipped to 366,209 in 2020, and reached 465,483 tonnes in 2025 - one cell of a matrix spanning about 1,130 reporting main airports against roughly 200 partner countries and world regions. Any question with a border in it lives here; see airport-pair data.
Directional and equipment splits. The tra_meas dimension separates loaded, unloaded, combined and on-board tonnage - imports versus exports at the airport level, not a netted blur.
Depth and mass. Observations run from 1993 through 2026-Q2 - three decades of quarterly and monthly texture - and the core table alone holds 10,794,784 of them. Nothing in the ACI stack attempts that longitudinal reach on the freight side.
Where they're equivalent
More than their different shapes suggest. Both field dictionaries were verified during research, a bar 16 of the slice's 18 records clear. Both put freight and mail in a single tonnage construct with documented exclusions instead of leaving definitions to inference. Both support month-grain observations - ACI's monthly collection spans roughly 1,200 airports, Eurostat lists monthly among its three frequencies - placing each among the 296 of 1,744 cataloged datasets carrying month-grain grids. Both score 8/10 against the catalog's 7.81 average, both ship as documented tabular structures rather than narrative PDFs alone, and both come from membership-backed or official statistical programs with validation passes of their own (ACI's confirmed rankings follow an April preliminary; Eurostat flags suspect observations inline).
The verdict
Verdict: sample both, pick by fit - they are different instruments pointed at the same industry.
Take ACI World Data Centre - Airport Traffic Statistics if your question names standing. Hub benchmarking, network sizing, who leads world cargo, which airports are climbing fastest, passenger context around a freight story - anything answered by a ranked global scoreboard with changes attached. Accept airport totals: no destination and no carrier appears behind any number.
Take Eurostat – Air Transport by Aircraft and Airline (AVIA_GOEXAC / AVIA_TF series) if your question names a border. Europe-to-China lanes, import-export balances at specific main airports, widebody-model exposure, EU-carrier versus non-EU-carrier shares of extra-EU freight - anything keyed by partner, direction or equipment. Accept the geographic frame: reporting sits inside EU/EFTA/candidate states only.
Investors and quants tend toward the first for universe screens and the second for factor work on trade corridors; market researchers and consultants usually want both orders reversed depending on whether the client sells into a hub or along a lane.
Sample both, pick by fit. See ACI World Data Centre - Airport Traffic Statistics · See Eurostat – Air Transport by Aircraft and Airline
Or take both in one feed
Yes - they stack because they occupy different layers of the same system. A defensible workflow: let ACI set the global backdrop - which hubs hold the tonnage, which are accelerating, where Louisville sits against Hong Kong - then read Eurostat underneath it for the corridor composition behind the European entries: which partner countries drive a hub's book, how loaded splits from unloaded, what the aircraft-model mix looks like.
Two alignments decide whether the merge holds. First, identifiers: ACI names airports with IATA codes, Eurostat uses ICAO-prefixed codes, so a crosswalk is mandatory - there is no shared key. Second, definitions: ACI's tonnage nets out trucked and transit freight with a documented Anchorage exception, while Eurostat offers loaded, unloaded and on-board separately - sum across tra_meas values carelessly and you will double-count. Align on period last; both grids support months, but the confirmed annual vintages are where each is strongest. Browse the rest of the shelf at the air freight & logistics data hub.
Datadory ships either record alone or both merged onto one calendar, delivered daily, weekly, or hourly - your call. Or take both in one feed.
API, files, or your warehouse. Daily, weekly, or hourly.
Fair questions
Is ACI World Data Centre - Airport Traffic Statistics better than Eurostat – Air Transport by Aircraft and Airline (AVIA_GOEXAC / AVIA_TF series)?
Better at different jobs. ACI World owns the global league table: 2,600-plus airports in 180-plus countries scored on passengers, cargo tonnes and aircraft movements, each figure carrying rank and year-over-year change. Eurostat owns the corridor view: 10.79 million observations splitting extra-EU freight and mail by main airport, partner country and traffic measure back to 1993.
Do the two datasets cover the same ground?
Only partly. Both count freight-and-mail tonnage at named airports, both at month grain if asked. One is a scoreboard, the other a route ledger.
Which dataset reaches further back?
The Eurostat series is deeper: AVIA_GOEXAC observations run from 1993 through 2026-Q2, with pre-2008 partner detail preserved in companion tables. ACI's published comparisons anchor on confirmed annual rankings with 2024-versus-2019 benchmarks in its busiest-airports tables, and its forecast product extends 2025-2054 across 100-plus countries rather than reconstructing deep history.
Which should an analyst studying Europe-to-China air cargo sample first?
Start with Eurostat - the Frankfurt/Main to China lane alone shows 374,920 tonnes in 2019 dipping to 366,209 in 2020 and reaching 465,483 tonnes in 2025, exactly the corridor-level read the question asks for. Then add ACI World to place those flows inside each hub's total cargo book and global ranking. Both land normalized to their documented field dictionaries.
Can Datadory deliver both datasets together?
Yes - alone or merged onto one calendar, delivered daily, weekly, or hourly, your call. Each arrives normalized to its documented field dictionary (six fields on the ACI side, nine on Eurostat's) with sample rows for inspection before anything ships. The only joining work is IATA-to-ICAO airport alignment, handled in the merge. Or take both in one feed.