Miami International seeking to boost tonnage

Miami International seeking to boost tonnage as top US global cargo airport

The 37,000 persons working at Miami International Airport (MIA) are strapping on their seatbelts for future growth, even though it already holds enviable records for expansion achieved in the years when COVID bit deeply into virtually all US airport passenger and cargo traffic.

With strong support from Miami-Dade County’s leadership where Mayor Daniella Levine Cava flat out salutes MIA as “our largest economic engine,” the gateway-to the Americas airport has been number one in the US for moving international freight for the past 20 years and is now the number three domestic airport for moving total cargo—freight and mail. Globally, it is the sixth busiest airport in the world for handling international cargo.

Record-breaking cargo growth has been continuous here for the last four years. MIA expects to complete 2024 with a record-breaking 2.9 million tons of freight moving through its 3,230 acres, Ralph Cutie, the airport’s CEO and executive director, told the American Journal of Transportation in an exclusive interview. For 2025, projections boost that total to more than three million tons, he adds.

But MIA is expected to make a quantum leap in international cargo throughput in 2029 when Miami-Dade County completes what is called a Vertically Integrated Cargo Community (VICC), a four-level, highly automated, robotic-powered, cargo warehouse, said to be one of the first of its kind in the U.S.

The five year, 800,000+ square foot project is being built on 11.1 acres of airport land by Miami Gateway Partners, a private developer, according to Cutie. He says it will double MIA’s current cargo storage and handling capacity to at least 4.5 million tons, add 2,500 new permanent jobs and generate about $512 million in fresh revenue over the 40 years of the lease agreement.

Meanwhile, MIA offers freight forwarders, 3PLs and direct shippers a wide variety of choices for moving freight to both domestic and international destinations. And not just a few flights a day to several cities.

American Airlines is a hub carrier at MIA and the airport’s largest airline with 390 flights daily during peak season. While it no longer has a freighter fleet—American once operated 747 all-cargo aircraft with payloads of up to 221,000 pounds—it has substantial belly freight capacity and reach to 70 US destinations, 45 markets in Latin America and the Caribbean, and flights to 150 destinations overall, says Cutie.

On its Latin American routes, however, American faces fierce competition for cargo tonnage from aggressive South American flag carriers including LATAM, Avianca, Amerijet and COPA Air plus Atlas Air, DHL, UPS and FedEx. All operate freighters and fight hard for the steady stream of perishables and other time-sensitive traffic moving northbound.

New Carriers and Expanding Business

Overall, MIA is served by 59 passenger airlines, 37 freighter airlines and the airport continues to add new carriers, says the airport CEO. With its geographical location, it’s no surprise there is more lift to Latin American cities these days. MIA added Mexican low-cost carrier Viva Aerobus in July to its schedule. The airline operates narrow-bodied A320 and the somewhat larger A321 flights to the Mexican cities of Monterey and Merida. Mexico is MIA’s second busiest international market and now five airlines serve that country from MIA.

MIA is also attracting airlines from other Florida airports. Last year, Norse Atlantic Airways, also a low-cost carrier but flying Boeing wide bodied 787 Dreamliners, switched from nearby Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport (FLL) to MIA. The switchover allows forwarders and other Norse shippers to connect to a variety of Latin American bound airlines and save themselves trucking time and expense from FLL.

MIA’s growing passenger volume could presumably create more belly capacity for cargo, Cutie says “We’re on our way to our third straight record-breaking passenger year with about 57 to 58 million passengers, up from 52.3 million in 2023, a 9 percent increase. And that’s not including the upcoming winter holiday passengers.” He credits the gain to a pent-up traveler demand –the “COVID bump” –but also sees an uptick in air cargo which would set a fourth straight annual tonnage record.

In addition to Norse Atlantic and Viva Aerobus, MIA has added in the last 18 months Aer Lingus, SAP which flies to Stockholm, Finnair, Frankfurt-headquartered Condor Air, and LEVEL, a Barcelona-based, low-cost airline that flies A300-200 widebodies and is affiliated with Iberia Air.

MIA has also lost five airlines in recent years including TUI fly, a Belgium charter airline, Aeroflot, the Russian airline, Viva Air Colombia, which liquidated several years ago, Sunwing, a budget leisure travel carrier, and European Air Transport Leipzig (EAT), now 100% owned by DHL which itself serves MIA. Except for all-freight EAT, the airport did not lose much cargo capacity when these passenger airlines pulled out.

Cutie is not worried about carrier defections. “The trend here is on the upswing, and we still have a lot more airlines that want to fly with us. Our route marketing team is constantly meeting with airlines so I expect that sometime next year we will be back over 100 carriers. That’s big news.”

Cold Chain and Cruise Ships

Miami International’s dominant import commodities continue to be perishables, specifically flowers, fish, fruit and vegetables. “We currently have roughly 466,000 square feet of cold storage on airport property and some of our partners have cold storage facilities off airport,” says Cutie. “That’s more than any other US airport I believe.”

Additional cool storage will be added in 2029 when the new VICC warehouse opens. “We don’t know exactly how much square feet will be devoted to perishables because the project has not been fully designed,” says the CEO. Another airport warehouse facility is being joint ventured by MIA and Miami’s seaport which will also include cold storage, but size and layout specifics have not been finalized, he adds.

Cutie contends MIA and the city’s seaport “have an extremely strong, symbiotic partnership where 90% of their cruise passengers fly through our airport.” The two transportation entities have had productive creative partnerships over the years, specifically an ocean-to-air perishables trans-shipment aimed at strengthening and diversifying their combined cargo business.

In a statement, MIA said the first trans-shipment included 10 tons of peas from Guatemala shipped north to Miami’s Port Everglades aboard a Crowley Maritime Corp. vessel. The peas were trucked to MIA and loaded on a (now defunct) Centurion Cargo freighter and flown to Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport.

MIA’s leadership at the time secured a permit for the transshipment program from the US Department of Agriculture and from US Customs and Border Protection. Cutie says the seaport and airport collaborate regularly. “The seaport director, Heidi Webb, and I are very close friends, talk almost every day and continue to explore innovative (transport and logistics) concepts. Anything that impacts us, impacts them. We are the number one and number two economic engines in the region.”

Latin American Hub

“Miami International Airport (MIA) is LATAM Cargo’s most important operational hub, serving as a key connection point between North and South America. This strategic hub not only strengthens our routes between the two continents but also enables us to expand our services to Europe and Asia, which are crucial markets for our clients. As a result, we operate the largest warehouse at the airport, covering approximately 31,000 square meters, and the most extensive cold storage facility, essential for maintaining the quality of perishable goods such as flowers and salmon. Last year, we made a significant investment to renew our facility usage contract for the next 13 years, as well as to incorporate improvements in infrastructure, sustainability, and safety, ensuring the continued excellence and reliability of our services”, comments Daniel Leng, COO at LATAM Cargo.

Cutie, who has worked for Miami-Dade County for 34 years, has been with MIA for nearly 12 years and has been the airport CEO and director for three years, candidly concedes MIA suffers from a problem faced by many of the bigger US airports—truck congestion during air cargo pickup and delivery runs.

“We are seeing an uptick in congestion in truck traffic, obviously because of the increase in air cargo over the last four years,” he tells the AJOT. But MIA is tackling the problem, investigating a cargo community systems program that digitally processes, tracks and documents truck traffic moving though the airport.

MIA’s CEO emphasizes that Miami -Dade County Mayor Cava “is our biggest fan” and has been “extremely, extremely supportive” of everything MIA’s executive leadership is doing to upgrade and streamline the airport infrastructure as its passenger and cargo volumes climb. “We have a total $9 billion capital improvement, expansion, modernization and maintenance program here which is unprecedented,” says Cutie.

One important decision to be made is what to do with MIA’s existing U.S. Customs Clearance facility which gets backed up as the airport’s seven ground handling firms are receiving a growing volume of international air cargo. Cutie says the choices are to renovate the current Customs facility, build a new one or explore other options. Discussions on a decision are ongoing with the US Customs and Border Protection.

While MIA is evaluating expansion to accommodate future growth, Atlas Air, its biggest cargo carrier, is in negotiations to build a new on-tarmac warehouse. Asked if Atlas Air’s expansion is driven by the sharp hike in e-commerce cargo, Cutie could not confirm or deny it. However, he does say that MIA’s total e-commerce tonnage projections are up “roughly” 20 percent. “I can tell you that e-commerce really carried us during COVID.”

(Atlas Air had a longstanding relationship with giant e-commerce retailer Amazon at MIA which involved two Prime Air 767-300 freighters serving US cities daily. But the contract ended this past May. Atlas Air is now redeploying seventeen 767 freighters and eight 737-800 all cargo jets to its other global customers. On the other hand, Amazon has four existing warehouses in and around Miami).

MIA is more than just an airport. Its entire 3,230 acres is designated as a foreign trade zone magnet site. The first operator within MIA’s FTZ is LATAM Cargo, its second busiest airline. LATAM Cargo ships its aircraft parts from Chile to its maintenance facility at MIA for repair and then sends them back to South America, all without paying federal import taxes.

Looking ahead, Cutie says there are 40,000 airports in the world and 20,000 in the US. And while MIA is very close to the top in terms of domestic and international airport rankings in cargo and passenger volumes, it is on the hunt for more foreign flag carriers. Cutie will not identify all the airlines he is wooing for MIA. He does say two of the carriers are based in the Middle East, other than Emirates, which already flies to Miami International. Another is Japan Airlines or JAL which could provide shippers and passengers with a non-stop flight from Tokyo to Miami.

“That would be historic for us because it would be the first direct flight between MIA and any location in Asia. But it will not happen for a couple of years,” says the CEO. “Meantime, we are currently on a robust hiring effort.”