Air Freight & Logistics Data: Cargo Tonnage, Trade Lanes, Rate Indices and Flight-Level Movement · Head-to-head
World Bank – Air Transport, Freight (million ton-km) IS.AIR.GOOD.MT.K1 vs Data.gov – Air Cargo Search Results
Which air freight & logistics data: cargo tonnage, trade lanes, rate indices and flight-level movement data fits your job: World Bank – Air Transport, Freight IS.AIR.GOOD.MT.K1, or Data.gov – Air Cargo Search Results. API, files, or your warehouse. Daily, weekly, or hourly.
World Bank – Air Transport, Freight (million ton-km) IS.AIR.GOOD.MT.K1
Data.gov – Air Cargo Search Results
Coverage, side by side
| World Bank – Air Transport, Freight IS.AIR.GOOD.MT.K1 | Data.gov – Air Cargo Search Results | |
|---|---|---|
| Geographic | All World Bank member economies plus regional and income aggregates worldwide - 265 entities | United States only, drawn from federal, state, county and city publishers |
| Temporal | 1970 through 2023, one observation per economy-year - 54 annual cycles | No single timeline; each catalog record carries its own issued, modified and harvested stamps, spanning the 2000s to 2026 |
| Granularity | Country-year aggregate of commercial carrier freight | One metadata record per dataset, each pointing at the publisher's own resource |
What each contains
Pick by fit, not by loyalty.
| World Bank – Air Transport, Freight IS.AIR.GOOD.MT.K1 | Data.gov – Air Cargo Search Results | |
|---|---|---|
| Geography | All World Bank member economies plus regional and income aggregates worldwide - 265 entities | United States only, drawn from federal, state, county and city publishers |
| Temporal reach | 1970 through 2023, one observation per economy-year - 54 annual cycles | No single timeline; each catalog record carries its own issued, modified and harvested stamps, spanning the 2000s to 2026 |
| Granularity | Country-year aggregate of commercial carrier freight | One metadata record per dataset, each pointing at the publisher's own resource |
| Scale | Roughly 265 economies x 54 years of annual observations | 14 datasets match the term out of roughly 552,000 cataloged datasets |
| Sample rows on file | Yes - United States 42,762.86 million ton-km in 2023, China 26,170.37, UAE 13,566.16 | Yes - five catalog records captured, including BTS Air Cargo - International and San Francisco Air Traffic Cargo Statistics |
| Companion series | Air transport passengers carried, railway freight, container port traffic, liner shipping connectivity index | Whole-catalog context: publisher typing, relevance scoring, verified-distribution flags |
| Best for | Cross-country air-freight benchmarking and macro logistics modeling | Discovering which US agencies publish air cargo data at all |
Or take both in one feed
They stack into a size-then-source workflow joined by geography and timing rather than keys. A logistics consultant can rank markets by air freight intensity and trajectory from the World Bank series, then turn to the search to inventory which federal, state and municipal publishers hold the operational detail behind the domestic leg of the same plan. An airport analyst can quote the ICAO-based national trend for context while citing city-level cargo ledgers as ground truth for what actually moved through the terminal. A competitive-intelligence team can screen countries by volume headroom while tracking which newly published intermodal facility files hit the shelf.
Two practical notes from the records. Align periods before joining, because one side moves on annual economy-years and the other stamps each record on its own publication rhythm. And mind the unit mismatch: tonne-kilometres are distance-weighted, while most publisher-side cargo files count tonnes or movements, so convert before comparing. Or take both in one feed.
API, files, or your warehouse. Daily, weekly, or hourly.
Fair questions
Is World Bank – Air Transport, Freight (million ton-km) IS.AIR.GOOD.MT.K1 better than Data.gov – Air Cargo Search Results?
For quantifying freight volumes, yes; for discovering sources, no. The World Bank series delivers a verified annual tonne-kilometre figure for 265 economies back to 1970, while the Data.gov search surfaces 14 American air-cargo datasets from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, CBP and city portals. They solve different problems - sample both and match each to the question.
What do IS.AIR.GOOD.MT.K1 and the Data.gov – Air Cargo Search Results have in common?
Structure rather than substance. Both dictionaries are compact and verified - six fields per World Bank observation, fourteen per Data.gov catalog record - and both reduce to an identifier, a date-shaped stamp and descriptive text. Their subjects barely intersect: a measured volume statistic versus descriptions of published datasets.
Which dataset covers more geography?
World Bank – Air Transport, Freight (million ton-km) IS.AIR.GOOD.MT.K1, decisively. It spans every World Bank member economy plus regional and income aggregates - 265 entities - while the Data.gov air cargo results come exclusively from United States federal, state, county and city publishers. Any non-US market question belongs to the indicator.
Which one reaches further back in time?
World Bank – Air Transport, Freight (million ton-km) IS.AIR.GOOD.MT.K1 runs from 1970 through 2023, giving fifty-four annual cycles of comparable history. The Data.gov search has no single timeline: each underlying dataset carries its own issue, modification and harvest stamps, spanning the 2000s to 2026, so depth depends on which records you pursue rather than on the catalog itself.
Do these two datasets include sample rows?
Both do. The World Bank file shows 2023 observations for the United States at 42,762.86 million ton-km, China at 26,170.37, the UAE at 13,566.16, Germany at 12,766.53 and Hong Kong SAR at 8,638.39. The search side holds five captured catalog records, including BTS Air Cargo - International and San Francisco's Air Traffic Cargo Statistics - request a pull to see the remaining nine.
Which one should an air cargo market-sizing team sample first?
Start with the indicator if the deliverable is a number: economy-year tonne-kilometres feed demand models and lane rankings directly. Start with the search if the deliverable is a source map of American air cargo holdings. Most sizing engagements end up wanting both, which is why Datadory offers them in one feed.