September’s airfreight price report contains an apparent contradiction that matters when a shipper cites an international benchmark during a trucking bid. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported October 16 that import airfreight prices rose 0.1% for the month, but its inbound airfreight index fell 1.0%. Those figures describe different market coverage. An airport pickup carrier or forwarder needs to identify the series before using either number to explain a customer’s transport bill.
Table 10 also shows export airfreight prices down 2.2% and outbound prices down 2.9% in September. The monthly declines leave substantial annual increases: import prices were 25.7% above September 2025, inbound prices 22.0% higher, export prices up 18.8% and outbound prices up 17.1%. These are price comparisons, not evidence that more or fewer pallets moved. BLS says the indexes are not seasonally adjusted and may be revised during the three months following initial publication.
The distinction begins with who pays whom. BLS defines import airfreight around payments by U.S. residents to foreign carriers for international carriage into the United States. Export airfreight measures payments by foreign residents to U.S. carriers for carriage out of the country. Inbound and outbound indexes instead follow direction across the U.S. boundary on any carrier. They therefore answer a different question from the import and export measures, even when the shipment geography sounds similar.
That coverage difference prevents a simple conclusion that one September number disproves the other. It also limits what a fleet can infer about its customers: an aggregate price movement does not identify the particular airline, service, route or commercial arrangement on an individual shipment. A benchmark needs to match the transaction being evaluated before its percentage change becomes useful in a cost discussion.
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BLS’s airfreight fact sheet describes a detailed service specification, including airports, carrier, rate type, shipment characteristics and applicable commissions, discounts and surcharges. Fuel and security charges can be part of that measured price. Its scope is airport-to-airport transportation; ground transportation and port services are excluded. The published air index consequently cannot establish the price of a truck pickup, delivery, airport transfer or waiting time.
FreightNews infers that the practical response is to ask for the benchmark’s exact name and the invoice component it is meant to explain. For an airport delivery quote, separate the purchased air service from the domestic truck movement and any separately billed handling or storage. Compare the actual route, service commitment and surcharge treatment with the agreed commercial terms before carrying a national percentage into a customer negotiation.
For capacity planning, use shipment releases, confirmed appointments and the ground work available at each gateway. September’s price table can inform a discussion about international transport costs; it supplies no airport trucking volume forecast. The useful new signal is the divergence between payment-based and directional measures. Choosing the right series comes before deciding whether a customer’s cost has changed—and the truck leg still needs its own evidence.